Seprember – December 2025
New Brief: Children on the Move in Greece – September - December 2025 -a joint briefing by the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) and Save the Children.
This issue highlights that, despite an overall decrease in arrivals in 2025, the demographic profile remains unchanged:children account for over one-fifth of all arrivals and 30% of these are unaccompanied or separated. Afghanistan, Egypt and Sudan remain the top nationalities. Crete continues to be the main entry point (44% of sea arrivals), including a rise in people from conflict-ravaged Sudan.
The three-month asylum suspension introduced in July caused confusion and unequal treatment, and the Greek Ombudsperson later found it “partial and fragmented”, questioning its proportionality and necessity.
At the same time, structural protection failures persist, particularly for unaccompanied children. The government is reopening and expanding “safe zones” in camps—despite long-standing findings that these spaces are unsafe and can amount to de facto deprivation of liberty. The new age-assessment JMD represents a significant rollback, compressing all steps into a single day, prioritising X-rays, reducing appeal deadlines to five days, presuming adulthood when medical tests are refused, and excluding children wrongly registered as adults from safeguards. Guardianship gaps remain significant, with too few guardians to meet current needs.
Turning 18 continues to be a major point of vulnerability. While a recent Ministerial Decision improves access to schooling for 18+ adolescents, young people still lose child-specific protection, face increased risk of arrest under the return law, and must meet near-impossible criteria, including 3 years of schooling, to secure long-term residence. Without a transitional permit for 18–23-year-olds, many risk falling out of school and protection entirely.
The brief calls for:
• Unrestricted access to asylum and an end to detention-like practices
• Child-centred age assessment with the presumption of minority
• An end to “safe areas” and investment in age-appropriate alternative accommodation
• A transitional permit for 18–23-year-olds to ensure continuity of protection
• EU migration funding tied to child-rights benchmarks
Read the full brief here
