According to a recent report of Refugee Legal Support and Mobile Info Team assessing the implementation of reception and identification procedures on mainland Greece: “Under the new procedure […] at one of two RICs on the Greek mainland, […] applicants are unable to exit the facility for a maximum of 25 days while they undergo screening consisting of a police interview, medical check, vulnerability assessment, and the registration of an asylum claim […]. Restriction of movement is applied as a blanket measure […] including (to) vulnerable persons […] meaning that people with a disability, pregnant women, victims of human trafficking, people with serious illnesses and torture survivors, among others, are subjected to de facto detention within the RICs for periods up to 25 days (and in practice possibly longer). […] assessment of vulnerability within the screening procedure is inadequate […]”.627 According to the law, when indications or claims of past persecution or serious harm arise (i.e., torture survivors), the Asylum Service has to refer the applicant to a medical and/or psychosocial examination, which should be conducted free of charge and by qualified, specialised personnel. Alternatively, the applicant must be informed that they can undergo such examinations at their own initiative and expense.628 However, Article 77(2) of the Asylum Code provides that ‘[a]ny results and reports of such examinations are deemed as justified by the Asylum Service where it is established that the applicant’s allegations of persecution or serious harm are likely to be well-founded’. Currently, there are no public health structures specialised in identifying or assisting torture survivors in their rehabilitation process. As a result, it is for the NGOs running relatively specialised programmes, to handle the identification and rehabilitation of victims of torture. This is rather problematic for reasons that concern the sustainability of the system, as NGOs’ funding is often interrupted. In Athens, torture survivors may be referred for identification purposes to the NGO METAdrasi in the context of its programme “Hope and Memory: Identification and Certification of Victims of Torture”.629 However, those referrals are mostly only made by other NGOs. According to a report of FENIX of April 2023 regarding identification and certification of victims of torture: “practice over the years has demonstrated serious deficiencies in the identification and certification of victims of torture of applicants in Greece […]. Additionally, structural deficiencies are also observed in the specific process to certify VoTs, namely due to restrictive legislation limiting only public authorities to provide certification for VoTs in accordance with the Istanbul Protocol, whilst national authorities and bodies do not have the qualification or training and lack of interpretation to proceed with this certification. At the same time, non-governmental organisations, namely Metadrasi, hold the appropriate expertise to provide certification for VoTs according to the Istanbul Protocol […] Nonetheless, […] the VoT certification provided by NGOs may be taken into consideration by asylum authorities for the purposes of the asylum procedure, but it is at the discretion of each decision maker […]”.630 Also, according to Article 62(5) of the Asylum Code “[i]n case the competent Authorities identify victims of human trafficking, they are obliged to inform the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for the identification and referral of victims of Human Trafficking as soon as possible631 in accordance with Articles 76 and 79 L. 4781/2021”. 627 628 629 630 631 Refugee Legal Support / Mobile Info Team, Protection Unavailable: Dysfunctional Practices and Restrictions on the Right to Asylum Assessing the implementation of reception and identification procedures on mainland Greece, November 2023, p. 32 et al., available at: https://tinyurl.com/yrsjp5xa. Article 77(3) Asylum Code. METAdrasi, Hope and Memory : Identification and certification of victims of torture, available at: https://bit.ly/3JQEFFP. FENIX – Humanitarian Legal Aid, Unrecognised Vulnerability- Greece’s systematic failure to identify and certify Victims of Torture, pp. 6-7, available at: https://tinyurl.com/mwpxajcv. Office of The National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings, web page, available at: https://bit.ly/3T60ZRw. 137