Migration

Together with the Goethe Institute Thessaloniki we did a public screening of the movie “Citizen of Moria” and took our audience on a journey to Europe’s most notorious refugee camp. In a personal interview the filmmaker and protagonist  Ahmad Ebrahimi talks about the struggle of being forced to flee in search for protection.

Together with the Goethe Institute Thessaloniki, we presented the award-winning documentary "Citizen of Moria" on Monday, 05th of July 2021,  followed by an online Q/A with the film producer Jawad Mir and the co-producer and protagonist Sayed Ahmadzia Ebrahimi. The screening took place in the garden of the Goethe-Institut. Language of the film: English, without subtitles.

Today is World Refugee Day. A day chosen back in 2001 to honour the Geneva Convention for refugees and to remind the world of the plight of refugees worldwide. This year marks two anniversaries: the 20th World Refugee Day and the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Convention. This is a good moment to reflect on the state of global and European protection of those fleeing war and persecution.

This article outlines the main features of the New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, and describes the context in which the proposal has been drafted. Some of the initial critical comments made by different stakeholders will be further highlighted, to draw some preliminary conclusions.

Key takeaways from the recent event of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung EU Office

A 6-year-old boy from Afghanistan drowned in November 2020 off the coast of Samos. Ηe was with his father and other asylum seekers onboard a dinghy that was shipwrecked. The tragic loss of a child’s life hardly made an impression on the international media or public discourse in Greece.  

Thirteen days after 35 cases of COVID-19 were identified in Moria, the announcement of 243 more cases in the new camp at Kara Tepe, on the island of Lesvos, is not simply testament to the administration’s bad luck, or the unsuitability of a temporary camp that was set up under threat. Rather, it demonstrates the government’s insistence on a “pandemic response plan” in which,  after exposing thousands of people to risk, it subsequently administers a large volume of rapid tests in order to record the outcome.  

Select Respect Network Organisations call for action following the Moria fire breakout.

Erik Marquardt got a first-hand impression of the inhuman conditions in the Moria refugee camp, where more than 20,000 people live in the most miserable conditions. An outbreak of coronavirus would be devastating. In order to draw more attention to this issue, he has co-created the Leave no One Behind campaign.