Assessing Vulnerability The fact of being unaccompanied is a key factor in rendering a child vulnerable. Yet in practice, Greek police hardly ever establish whether a child is unaccompanied. Indeed, it appears that the authorities are reluctant to identify children as such. 81 When asked about the presence of unaccompanied children, the chief of Samos police said, “Usually, children who arrive here are accompanied; they stay with their families and then they leave together.”82 A representative of the Hellenic coastguard told Human Rights Watch that out of more than 25,000 persons the coastguard had apprehended in the past five years “there were no reported cases of unaccompanied minors.”83 In 2007 and the first half of 2oo8, the Ministry of Interior issued a total of 12,904 orders of deportation to children for illegal entry or presence in the country. The Ministry, however, was unable to tell Human Rights Watch how many of these orders were given to unaccompanied children and how many had been given multiple times to the same persons (see chapters V and VIII for a discussion on detention and deportation orders).84 This blindness to a whole category of children means that few are even entering the protection system, inadequate as it is. There are serious flaws in the way authorities identify vulnerable individuals. Human Rights Watch interviewed several unaccompanied children who were victims of armed conflict, violence, or abuse. Some appeared to be victims of trafficking. In no case did the police correctly identify their vulnerability and special needs, or refer them to special services (see also chapter VII).85 Indeed, the chief of police in Samos 81 The NGO Pro Asyl found that police in Mitilini, Lesvos Island, deliberately registered unaccompanied children as being accompanied by strangers. Pro Asyl, “The truth may be bitter but it must be told,” October 2007, http://www.proasyl.de/fileadmin/proasyl/fm_redakteure/Englisch/Griechenlandbericht_Engl.pdf (accessed September 1, 2008) p. 25, and Papageorgiu and Dimitropoulou, Unaccompanied Minors Study, pp. 42-43. 82 Human Rights Watch interview with Ioannis Kotsampasi, chief of police, Samos, May 30, 2008. 83 Human Rights Watch interview with Konstantinos Gialelis, Hellenic Coast Guard, Intelligence Directorate, Piraeus, June 5, 2008. 84 The Deputy Minister of Interior made these figures public in a response letter to a question by a Member of Parliament on August 11, 2008. A copy of the letter is on file with Human Rights Watch. 85 An Athens-based service provider for torture victims told us that the majority of patients are referred to them by NGOs and that the police had made referrals in the past two years. We were furthermore told that state funding for these services ceased Left to Survive 28