society organisations are participating, 109 including GCR. The Mechanism initially recorded at least 50 incidents and 58 testimonies of informal forced returns which, according to testimonies of the alleged victims, occurred between April 2020 and October 2022. The total number of alleged victims in the report was approximately 2,157 third country nationals, including asylum applicants and recognised refugees in Greece. In December 2023, the “Recording Mechanism” published a follow-up report110 to the Interim Report of the Recording Mechanism of January 2023. In the period between February 2022 and December 2022, the Recording Mechanism had recorded testimonies through personal interviews with 43 alleged victims about 50 incidents of illegal forced returns. The countries of origin of the alleged victims are listed among the countries with high recognition rates for international protection status in Greece and the EU (Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Cameroon, Mali and Democratic Republic of Congo). The majority of the alleged victims are unregistered asylum seekers who reported that their personal data had never been recorded by the Greek Authorities and that they were informally and forcibly returned to Türkiye. The report also flags the cases of six Turkish nationals unregistered asylum seekers politically persecuted in Türkiye, who were directly pushed back to their country of origin without any assessment of their international protection needs. According to the GNCHR, “[t]hese incidents constitute a direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement, which is the cornerstone of international protection of asylum seekers and refugees”.111 In the same report, and among the 43 alleged victims, five were already asylum applicants in Greece and five were recognised refugees in Greece. The latter five alleged victims were deprived of their international protection status, already granted to them by the Greek State. In 2024, the GNCHR published a new report covering the period from January to December 2023. 112 In this period, the Recording Mechanism recorded testimonies related to approximately 45 informal forced return incidents (IFR), which had reportedly occurred between January 2022 and December 2023, through personal interviews with 37 alleged victims. According to the testimonies, the 45 IFR incidents involved a minimum of 1.438 persons, including at least 158 women, 190 children and 41 persons having special needs, such as persons with medical conditions, elderly people and people with disabilities. The countries of origin of the alleged victims are countries whose nationals are granted international protection status in Greece and the rest of the EU at significant rates (Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Cameroon, Mali and Democratic Republic of Congo). Upon an invitation to that end by the ECtHR, the GNCHR submitted a third-party intervention in the cases of G.R.J v. Greece and A.E. v. Greece, 113 in which the Commission referred to the abovementioned findings. Throughout 2024, the Mechanism received 61 testimonies of alleged victims of pushback operations at land and sea borders and the Full Report is expected to be published later in 2025. The Greek Ombudsperson, after taking under consideration the number of reported pushback incidents between 2017 and March 2024, the relevant complaints submitted to its own office and the findings of its own investigations in his capacity as National Mechanism for the Investigation of Arbitrary Incidents regarding law enforcement officers, concluded that “the persistent reluctance on the part of the disciplinary bodies of the enforcement agencies to investigate such incidents” and “the recurrent shortcomings impeding the effectiveness and diligence of the few investigations launched”, suggest that [...] “unlawful pushbacks at land and sea borders present features that do not correspond or correlate to an isolated phenomenon”.114 The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) of the Council of Europe has repeatedly underlined over the previous years that it 109 110 111 112 113 114 Greek Council for Refugees (GCR), Hellenic League for Human Rights (HLHR), Network for Children’s Rights, Medical Intervention, METAdrasi – ACTION FOR MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, Transgender Support Association, RSA, HIAS Greece, Legal Centre Lesvos, Danish Refugee Council Greece (DRC). See https://bit.ly/3Ix1jTl. GNCHR, Full Annual Report of 2022, published in December 2023, available at: https://bit.ly/3PSoOtv. Ibid. page 5 of the report All reports of the Recording Mechanism of Informal Forced Returns of the Greek National Commission for Human Rights available here. GNCHR, Written submission to the European Court of Human Rights (Third Section) made by the Greek National Commission for Human Rights as a third party, in relation to Applications nos. 15067/21 - G.R.J. v. Greece, and 15783/21 - A.E. v. Greece, 28 March 2024, available in English here. See, esp., paras 13-33. Greek Ombudsperson, Third party intervention before the European Court of Human Rights in the cases G.R.J. v. Greece and A.E. v. Greece (applications nos. 15067/21 and 15783/21), p.11, 14 March 2024, available here. 43