with medical issues, children below the age of 14 and girls, regardless their age.678 The next group of guardians is expected to start in the beginning of March 2024, covering more of the identified needs. Assigning the additional task of guardianship to prosecutors has proved to be particularly disastrous over the years, especially given the number of prosecutors and their workload as prosecuting authorities.679 Therefore, this development is positive, but it also needs to be sustainable. The General Secretariat for Vulnerable Persons and Institutional Protection has replied to GCR that funding for this project is secured until the end of 2023, but it’s in the Secretariat’s aspirations that funding is not going to be a problem for the project’s sustainability.680 The total number of applications for international protection lodged by unaccompanied minors before the Asylum Service in 2023 is 2,937 (of which 42 are subsequent), while only 1,163 unaccompanied children received positive decisions during the same period.681 As some decisions spill over from previous years and the number of negative decisions is not publicly available, nor was this number shared by the Greek authorities despite GCR’s request one cannot estimate the actual scale of the issue. In early April 2021, the Ministry of Migration and Asylum and UNHCR, in collaboration with IOM and the NGOs Arsis, METAdrasi and the Network for Children’s Rights, launched a mechanism to rapidly identify unaccompanied children who are homeless or live in insecure conditions and transfer them to safe accommodation. The National Emergency Response Mechanism (NERM), which remains operational to this day, includes a 24/7 telephone hotline (multiple languages available) for identifying and tracing children in need,682 and Info Desks / Mobile Units in Athens and Thessaloniki, together with emergency accommodation facilities. NERM is considered an integral part of UASCs protection in Greece,683 and the General Secretariat plans to expand its scope to cover vulnerable persons who are homeless or at risk.684 According to GCR’s observations, the new mechanism is very responsive to requests addressed both by NGO’s and by UAMs themselves. According to the General Secretariat for Vulnerable Persons and Institutional Protection since the beginning of NERMs operation in 2021 until 27 November 2023, the number of unaccompanied children who have been accommodated by NERM is 4,292 and a total of 586 unaccompanied/separated children from Ukraine have received support by the Mechanism from March 2022 until 27 November 2023.685 According to the same source, the Secretariat plans to expand NERM’s competence beyond UASCs, offering also support to vulnerable persons who are homeless or at risk. 678 679 680 681 682 683 684 685 UNHCR, Child Protection Working Group meeting documents, December 2023, available at: https://tinyurl.com/byhyuhwk. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Children Cast Adrift: The Exclusion and exploitation of unaccompanied minors (UAMs), November 2019, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yckvetdf. Answer received orally at the UNHCR Child Protection North 29 Jan 2024 meeting. See MoMA’s consolidated report for 2023, APPENDIX Α, available at: https://tinyurl.com/bdh5zyba, p. 7 and 15. Ministry of Migration and Asylum, Σε λειτουργία ο εθνικός μηχανισμός για τον εντοπισμό και την προστασία ασυνόδευτων παιδιών σε επισφαλείς συνθήκες, 6 April 2021, available in Greek at: https://tinyurl.com/56y82a7e. Ministry of Migration and Asylum, Special Secretariat for the Protection of UAMs, National Emergency Response Mechanism. A safety net for unaccompanied children identified in precarious living conditions, November 2022, available at: https://tinyurl.com/mwwnjr3z. see Ministry of Migration and Asylum, General Secretariat for Vulnerable Persons and Instituntional protection, presentation at the UNHCR Child Protection Working Group, December 2023, available at: https://tinyurl.com/u33d6ekm. UNHCR, Child Protection Working Group meeting documents, December 2023, available at: https://tinyurl.com/u33d6ekm. 147