Greece

icona

2016

First intervention

8.000

People reached

6

Projects

600.552

Budget spent


Context

Greece is a country at the crossroads of contemporary migration, with over 1.2 million people arriving by land or sea since 2014. Since then, INTERSOS has set itself the goal of offering immediate support and lasting solutions to those in need. The EU-Turkey agreements, signed in 2016, and the Covid-19 pandemic have contributed significantly to the decrease in arrivals over the years. Despite this, 18.780 people reached Greece in 2022, twice as many as in the previous year.

The migrant population in the country counts 86.600 refugees and asylum seekers, 25% of whom come from Ukraine. Reception centres are overcrowded and the living conditions of refugees and asylum seekers are particularly complex, with difficulties in accessing food and health services and gaps in water, sanitation and hygiene services.

SECTORS OF INTERVENTION

INTERSOS’ intervention

During 2022, INTERSOS continued to provide various support activities and protection services to improve the living conditions of people on the move, refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented people in the country. INTERSOS Hellas’ strong sense of solidarity is explicit in the name of its projects: Food for all, Vaccines for all, Protection for all minors.

Protection for all Minors is a pioneering project offering comprehensive support to unaccompanied minors living in precarious or homeless conditions.

We inform, support and empower unaccompanied minors to move away from their precarious and insecure living conditions. The aim is to support them in improving their living conditions, in juvenile shelters or semi-independent flats, where they can enjoy a greater sense of stability and security.

In 2022, efforts continued to ensure access to Covid-19 vaccination for migrants who do not have access to the health system.

It was also the first full year of the Food for all project in Athens, where 1.246 bags of food were distributed to meet the needs of 4.268 people, 40% of whom were minors.

With the aim of promoting the integration of refugees into Greek society and increasing the prospects for self-sufficiency and self-determination, through the HELIOS project, our staff identified more than 50 flats in the regions of Epirus and Thessaly, offering information and support sessions on the processes to be followed to obtain accommodation and documents to be submitted, interpretation services and other support services to 836 people.

Since 2021 in Lesvos, INTERSOS Hellas continues to provide psychological support to asylum seekers and highly vulnerable refugee persons (survivors of gender-based violence, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and those with mental and physical health problems).

The difficult context of the island makes mental health a priority. In the context of a holistic approach to mental health, we conducted 940 sessions of psychological support and long-term and short-term psychiatric care in 2022.