Self-protection in Greece: sticking with groups, communicating, protesting, and fighting

ABSTRACT

Despite the international community’s responsibility to protect (R2P) mandate, we are years away from effective international enforcement mechanisms. It is therefore important that we better understand and seek to support local capacities for self-protection. Migrants and refugees in Greece have shown us four central ways they cope with insecure environments. They stick together in groups, communicate warnings of danger, protest when conditions are threatening, and fight when all else fails. This practical note offers three recommendations on how to support the capacity of displaced people to protect themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict and reconstruction – Forced displacement
• Labour and livelihoods – Migration
• Rights
• Technology – ICT
• Media
• Gender and diversity
• Aid – Capacity development
• Western and Southern Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Tania Karas is an independent journalist interested in social justice and human rights. In 2015–16, she was a US Fulbright Fellow based in Greece reporting on refugees and migration policy at a time of financial crisis. Until December 2014, she covered US legal education, immigration and New York courts for the New York Law Journal, a daily newspaper based in Manhattan. She was a 2011 Eric Lund Global Reporting Fellow in Istanbul and in 2012 published an in-depth report on Turkey’s dwindling Greek Orthodox Christian community. In September 2015, she was a United Nations Foundation Press Fellow and attended the UN General Assembly. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

Joseph G. Bock is Director of the School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development at Kennesaw State University. He was a Fulbright Specialist in 2015–2016 in Greece, where he worked with the Mayor of Athens and his staff in addressing the influx of refugees and migrants. Previously, he was at the Eck Institute for Global Health at the University of Notre Dame. His humanitarian work has included directing Catholic Relief Services’ programmes in Pakistan and Jerusalem/West Bank/Gaza Strip, and overseeing programmes in Bosnia, Croatia, Guinea, Iraq, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Pakistan, Rwanda, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Thailand, and Uganda while serving as Vice President at American Refugee Committee. He received his PhD from the School of International Service of American University in Washington, DC.

Notes

1 See especially paragraphs 138–140 of United Nations General Assembly (2005).

2 Due to Greece’s chronic shortage of shelter spaces for unaccompanied children, those identified by authorities are often held in jail cells – ostensibly for their own protection – for weeks until a shelter bed becomes available. Interview with Save the Children, Greece office, 10 May 2016.

3 Interviews conducted at Port of Patras, May 2016.

4 Because these apps require cellular data or an internet connection, wi-fi access has emerged as a critical need within Greece’s refugee camps (Epstein 2015).

5 Interviews at Idomeni, March and April 2016.

 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fulbright Foundation in Greece and the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.