B. Scope
This report explores 1) the legal grounds for detaining asylum seekers—both those with cases pending and
those with final rejections, 2) the living conditions in detention, and 3) the available legal remedies for challenging detention. It also considers the legal grounds for detaining vulnerable individuals, including minors,
persons with serious illnesses, and survivors of gender-based violence.
This report raises two key legal questions: (1) do the detention practices on Kos violate Greek, EU, and international human rights law and (2) are the conditions in the Kos PRDC in line with Greece’s positive obligations to provide adequate living conditions as proscribed by Greek, EU, and international human rights law?
Although the two questions posed by this report are interconnected, they invoke separate legal questions and
affect different dimensions of fundamental and human rights. Accordingly, this report is divided into two
parts.
The first section provides an overview of the legal pre-conditions required to detain migrants in Greece and
assesses whether the practice of detaining migrants on Kos is compatible with these various legal standards. It
then explores the procedural guarantees that Greek authorities must ensure detained migrants under EU, domestic, and human rights law–including access to lawyers, the provision of information regarding the grounds
for one’s detention, and an individualised assessment—in order to evaluate whether the procedures on Kos
meet these guarantees. In both cases, this report concludes that the practices on Kos are—in many respects—
unlawful.
The second section investigates whether the Greek state meets its positive obligations to provide living conditions in accordance with the law – regardless of whether the detention itself is lawful or not. This part of
the report is based primarily on the reports and insights of the 31 asylum seekers interviewed while detained
in the Kos PRDC. It is the most comprehensive report on the living conditions in the Kos PRDC to date, as
observers and lawyers have not had access to the living areas of the Kos PRDC since March 2020. Lastly, the
second section briefly discusses the hardships faced by those previously-detained on Kos upon their release –
highlighting the unforeseen, lasting consequences of Kos’ detention practices.
6
DETENTION OF MIGRANTS ON THE ISLAND OF KOS
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