BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION RADIO 4

Transcription

1 BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION RADIO 4 TRANSCRIPT OF FILE ON 4 A GREEK TRAGEDY CURRENT AFFAIRS GROUP TRANSMISSION: Tuesday 10 th January REPEAT: Sunday 15 th January REPORTER: PRODUCER: EDITOR: Phil Kemp Sally Chesworth Gail Champion PROGRAMME NUMBER: PEL /AAA

2 - 1 - THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. FILE ON 4 Transmission: Tuesday 10 th January 2017 Repeat: Sunday 15 th January 2017 Producer: Reporter: Editor: Sally Chesworth Phil Kemp Gail Champion ACTUALITY WILD ANIMAL NOISES I m on the Greek island of Samos on the European Union s eastern frontier and I ve just walked into a migrant camp, where we re told as many as eighty children could be staying without their families. On one side of me is a tall metal fence capped with barbed wire and what looks like a small village of metal containers behind it. On the other, row after row of tents snake up the hillside here. You might have thought the migrant crisis was over - and it s true the number arriving on these islands is much reduced. But a new crisis has taken its place and thousands are now trapped in Greece, waiting to see if they ll be granted asylum in the EU - many of them children. MUSIC My father dead, the Taliban killed him. Two brothers dead in suicide bomb and then my mother. I m sorry, I can t say. finish. No baba, no mother, father. Me no family. Family

3 - 2 - Tonight on File on 4, we meet the children braving winter here in makeshift detention camps and ask if enough is being done to protect some of the world s most vulnerable washing up on Europe s shores. MUSIC FADE ACTUALITY WITH TABLE FOOTBALL BISWAS: Yeah, this is the foosball table. So it s being used at least ten hours a day. You can see almost some of the small men are starting to lose their legs because it s being spun so much around. The sound of young migrants playing table football can be heard pretty much all day here in Athens at the shelter Dan Biswas founded with his wife last July. It s called Faros or Lighthouse in English and Dan opened it to house at least some of the unaccompanied children he was finding living on the streets or in the city s parks. These boys are the lucky ones. There are twice as many unaccompanied migrant children in Greece as there are official places available in shelters. So what goes on in this building then? [BOY GRABS MICROPHONE] How are you? Welcome. [LAUGHING] Hello. Dan s showing me around when a boy grabs the microphone. We are from Iraq, Faros very, very good. And how old are you? How old are me? Twelve! You are twelve? Yes, twelve.

4 - 3 - Wow, your English is excellent. English, yes, yes, I have to This is Ramyar. Because of his age, we ve changed his name to protect his identity. Ramyar is amiably mischievous. He s bouncy and curious and loves a cuddle, especially from the women on the staff at Faros. He arrived just three months ago and Dan and his team are still unravelling what happened to him. No baba, no mother, father. Me go, I think, yes. Do you have family in Athens at all? Me no family, family finish. BISWAS: So when he came here he was giving different versions of his story as a defence mechanism, not allowing anyone to get that close to him and then he actually ran away from our shelter, but then after I think a week or two, he was brought back and we were able to get closer to him and work more with him and get to know him and try our best also to make him feel safe, and although he is still very vulnerable and in a very difficult situation, we have seen a lot of change in him also. Taking over as our tour guide, Ramyar leads us to his dorm and points to a bunk bed decorated with brightly coloured pictures. So this is your bed? Yes. Only photo. So you drew all these? Yes, because me very, very like photo. What have you drawn on these pictures?

5 - 4 - I love Marianna. Is Marianna your dog? me. After Marianna, photo Faros after Iraq. Now England. Yes, me very, very love Marianna, because dog love Well that s very good. You draw very well. Ramyar shares his dorm with boys from some of the world s most crisis-hit communities. He points to where each of them sleep. Yes, yes, yes. Because room Afghani, Pakistani, Kurdish, Kurdish, Afghani. Because me very, very like, always friendly. You re on the bottom of a bunk bed here. Yes, me very, very like bed here. This is your blanket. Ramyar and the other nineteen boys who stay here at Faros are among more than two thousand unaccompanied migrant children now estimated to be in Greece. ACTUALITY IN LANGUAGE CLASS TEACHER: Anybody want to tell me, what did you do last night? Let s start with just a little bit of conversation. BOY: I went to sleep As well as being given food, shelter and legal advice to help them pursue asylum claims, the boys are also offered education at Faros. yes. Last night my sister called to me from Afghanistan,

6 - 5 - class. 15 year old Bilal is one of the star pupils in the English I spoke with her. I was speaking with her a lot of time. I think two hours TEACHER: Beautiful. Okay. Bilal s around five feet tall with slick, long black hair combed into a side parting. He looks very young in jeans and a black hoodie. Once more, because of his age, we ve changed his name. When I reaching Faros I think I born now. You were born? my place is very bad. Kunduz now there is Taliban and Daesh. Yeah, I born now, because when I was in Afghanistan, Isis? Isis, yes. And now I have there two brothers, and last night I called him. How is life going? And he told me, oh don t speak about life. After 6 or 5pm, we can t go outside, my brother told me. If I go outside, maybe the Taliban or Isis killed me. Do you worry about them? Of course I worry about them, because I don t have father or mother. My father dead, the Taliban killed him. Two brothers dead in suicide bomb and then my mother. I m sorry, I can t say. It s okay, take your time, take your time.

7 - 6 - KEMP cont: After a moment collecting his feelings, Bilal explains he d also lost his mother - to cancer - so his older brothers had to raise him. I love my brothers, like father and like mother. It must have been so hard for you to leave them. I think your life be better. It was difficult for me. They told me if you go Europe, MUSIC Bilal tells us for a time he worked in a factory in Iran, making women s dresses. He would sleep at work after the lights went out, afraid he might be caught by the police if he was spotted outside for being in the country illegally. Before long he d earned enough money to pay some smugglers to get him to Europe. I had one time twenty hours hiking mountain. It was very bad for me because I didn t have water and I didn t have food, so I was there like this, oh help me, help me, I don t have water, I don t have water, please help me. So were you all on your own? came to Greece. That s more difficult. I was alone, so I was in Turkish four days and then I What was that like? Oh, boat makes from balloon tube, balloon. So like an inflatable boat?

8 - 7 - Yeah, yeah. 43 or 45 people in the boat. We didn t have place for sitting. When I reached the middle, here is Turkish, here is Greece, my boat finished gas. The boat ran out of gas halfway to Greece? Yeah, yeah. We were there five hours, six hours, everybody crying, oh my God, help me, oh my God, help me, oh my God, help me. And some person told me, do you speak English? So I called Greece police, I told them police, please help us. There were children and oh, I can t say, it s difficult, yeah. Is it hard, hard to remember? Yeah, yeah. MUSIC After concern across Europe about the scale of the crisis, the countries along the so-called Balkan route to the EU Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia - closed their borders to migrants last March, trapping tens of thousands of them inside Greece. The EU also signed an agreement with Turkey to send back anyone who either doesn t apply for asylum or has their claim rejected, in exchange for accelerating Ankara s plans for accession. As a result, last year the number making the journey to Greece fell by around 80%. But what was hoped would be a solution has created a whole new crisis. Closing the borders means that the migrants that are here - still around 60,000 - have to enter a Greek asylum system overwhelmed by the task it faces. Since the deal with Turkey, just 162 unaccompanied migrant children have been relocated from Greece to other European countries. To put that into context, there are currently an estimated 2,300 children in the country without their families. Bilal is just one of many desperate to move on. here. I don t like to learn Greek because I don t want to be You don t want to stay in Greece?

9 - 8 - No, I don t want to stay here. Georgia Spyropoulou is a human rights lawyer who compiles monthly reports on the situation for migrants and refugees for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. She s highly critical of Europe s response since the height of the crisis. SPYROPOULOU: It s definitely worse than it was in What is happening now is that Greece has turned into a great warehouse for refugees. Fifty thousand people are living in this situation, worse than if they lived in an actual warehouse. I mean, if you see the refugee sites that people are staying, they are not a way of living, it s not a proper way of living in the 21st century in a European member state. We cannot actually compare the situation in 2015 with the situation in 17, because what happened in 2015 was an emergency situation. We shouldn t approach the situation as an emergency situation. It s not. We should talk about something that s in a way permanent, because these people, until they are either relocated or their asylum applications are examined and taken the status of refugee, they will stay in Greece and they will stay in these camps until they are fully integrated or relocated. We should have a coherent way of providing shelter and services and this is not the case in Greece today. ACTUALITY BUSKING IN MAIN SQUARE Here in Athens main square, there s little sign of the warehousing Georgia Spyropoulou told us about, but you don t have to go far to find it. We ve heard that, on the outskirts of the city, there s an old airport that s been brought back into service as a kind of bizarre migrant village, so we re about to jump on the metro and see what conditions are like for the hundreds now living there. ACTUALITY ON METRO ACTUALITY OUTSIDE AIRPORT, RAIN

10 - 9 - Well, this is completely surreal. I m standing in what must have been the old forecourt to the airport and there are children out playing in the puddles as lightning flashes in the distance, and I can see tiny handprints painted on the walls, where this must be used as a kind of nursery during the daytime. There s just an overwhelming sense of futility about the place - toddlers clothes hanging out to dry in the middle of a torrential downpour and hundreds of migrants sleeping in the middle of an old airport terminal who, ironically, aren t going anywhere. ACTUALITY INSIDE AIRPORT TERMINAL Up the stairs in the old terminal building, migrants have put up tents, hanging bed sheets between them in an attempt to give themselves and their families some privacy. ACTUALITY OF CHILDREN PLAYING IN THE RAIN Outside on the balcony, children play in the pouring rain. We were told a toddler had died previously falling onto the car park below. Inside, we find a shy 17 year old Afghan boy called Mustafa. The spot where he pitched his tent is near to the sign for passport control. But he had no use for this. The border out of Greece closed just three days before he arrived there. With the help of an interpreter, Mustafa shows us where he s sleeping. Can we see in your tent? MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: Yes, why not? The blue one in the corner here? MUSTAFA [VIA INTEPRETER]: In the corner, yes. You have got a little padlock here. It s all locked up. MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: The tent, because I have some of my important papers inside of the tent.

11 to sleep on. Have you got a blanket in the corner there? You ve got your pillow, there s a sheet down for you MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: Yes, it s a small blanket. Is this everything that you own in the world here? MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: Yes, this is all of my life I have in the world, without money. Just this tent. Everything you see inside. One tiny tent. MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: I don t have any family. The Taliban killed my parents. So you re all on your own in Greece? MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: Yes, I live alone. I had a brother; I lost him on the border of Iran. Why did you leave Afghanistan? MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: Because, you know, in my village, in Kunduz, it is war, and the Taliban told my father, he was a farmer, they say you should make opium, and my father doesn t accept it. For that reason they killed my father and because of that we left. It wasn t safe for you to stay? MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: Yes, yes they told us they will kill us and they are searching for us. For that reason, we leave. There are lots of people living here. Are there other young men like you who are living on their own, without their families, in this building?

12 MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: Yes, is there a lot of like me and younger than me, but nobody cares about them. Some of them 16, 15 or some 14 years, and some of them, they went with traffickers; the people who had money, they went with traffickers, but we are the people who doesn t have money in there. What do you think is going to happen to you all? MUSTAFA [VIA INTERPRETER]: I don t know anything about my future. MUSIC Mustafa s situation is far from ideal, but there are children even worse off than him. At the charity Human Rights Watch, Eva Cosse has been investigating what s happening to the many unaccompanied migrant children who don t get places in official shelters. Some, she says, have even been kept in police cells. COSSE: During our research, we met children who you could see in them the high impact of detention in their psychology and mental health. I mean, when I was interviewing them, they were not looking me in my eyes, they were looking down or looking on the floor or they were doing nervous moves, going back and forth. And we also interviewed children who had self-harmed while in detention, children who had cut themselves, in some cases children told us how they thought about ending their lives. I remember in one police station, we were at the first floor sitting next to a balcony and the police brought one of the kids so that we can interview him. And he ran towards the balcony, before we managed to speak to him, and he said, Ah, the sun freedom. And it was just an immediate reaction; he hadn t seen the sun for more than four weeks. conditions? How long are some of these children staying in those COSSE: Generally speaking, the Greek law says that children shouldn t be detained under exceptional circumstances for more than 25 days. What we ve seen is that children have been detained for weeks and months. We even spoke to children who had been detained in detention centres for more than two months without having access

13 COSSE cont: to any interpreters, without knowing why they are there, what will happen to them. Often we were the first persons from the outside world that they saw. We asked for permission to see for ourselves what conditions were like for migrant children staying in detention, but we were told for official reasons that wasn t possible. MUSIC Hear the word detention and a police cell might well be the image that comes to mind. But young migrants are also being detained in what are known as reception and identification centres or hotspots on the Greek islands, in conditions that will be familiar to those who ve seen images of the former camp in Calais. ACTUALITY ON AEROPLANE We headed to one of the islands in the Aegean Sea closest to Turkey and on the frontline of the crisis, where we d heard hundreds of migrants were being kept in one of these centres. EXTRACT FROM SAMOS TOURISM VIDEO PRESENTER: island of choice muscatel wines Samos, birthplace of Pythagorus and Bacchus. The For much of the year Samos s beaches and azure sea make it a popular destination for tourists. The island s economy is almost entirely dependent on it. But come the winter, the weather makes this place almost unrecognisable from the holiday ads. As we arrived, heavy rain was being replaced by near freezing temperatures. ACTUALITY WITH VOLUNTEERS

14 ANDREI: Nine to thirteen, teenagers. All our donations are here, sorted by age category, and now what we are seeing is kids jumpers. They are really needed right now because it is getting very, very cold outside. Bogdan Andrei is one of the coordinators of the charity Samos Volunteers, which plays a key role in offering aid and support to refugees, working closely with international NGOs. The volunteers, like Bogdan, come from across Europe. In a cabin next to their warehouse, he told us what had changed on the island since he arrived a year ago. ANDREI: Beforehand, people are just transitioning to the island. They were arriving, they were staying for a few days, getting their registration paper and then boarding on the first ferry they could get and continue their journey to the mainland and then to the European country that they wanted to get to. winter? So what s the longest they might have stayed last ANDREI: I think the longest was three weeks. The situation changed a lot since the EU-Turkey deal in the end of March. There s people now for eight months in the camp. They might spend the whole winter under canvas here? ANDREI: Yes, yes. And there will definitely be people spending the whole winter in these conditions. I m worried that there s not going to be a solution found for the people that are living in these tents, because they cannot survive for three months or more on these conditions and it s going to rain quite often. ACTUALITY IN STORE ANDREI: Can you help Costas to find. COSTAS: I need two pairs of shoes.

15 MAN: What size? COSTAS: 44, for men. ANDREI: There s not enough items for everyone, there is not enough services for everyone, and now the rains have started and people are really in appalling conditions here. They come to us with their baby completely wet and he had to wait till in the morning to get a new set of clothes. It happens very, very often. What do you say to someone like that? ANDREI: What can you say to someone like that? You just help as much as you can, you alleviate a bit of suffering on the moment but you know that this is not a long-term solution, because the winter season just started now and rains will come again and again. ACTUALITY IN STORE COSTAS: Fantastic, yes, good. Progress in moving migrants on from Samos has been slow. The UK, for example, only accepted around 140 unaccompanied children from the whole of Europe between January and October of last year. Later, more than 750 were also transferred from France after the Calais camp closed. The Home Office couldn t tell us how many had come to the UK from Greece specifically. We wanted to visit the children staying at the hotspot on Samos, but were refused permission. What we d heard was so concerning, we decided to try anyway. ACTUALITY OF DOG BARKING So it s getting late, towards the end of the day, and the last bit of light is fading behind the hills here. We re walking up to the back entrance of the camp here on Samos. High metal fences with barbed wire at the top. In front of us there s

16 KEMP cont: tents all the way up this hill. UNHCR emblazoned canvas on our left, being held down with large rocks so it doesn t blow away. So this is a bit of extra cover they ve been given to guard against the rain and the cold. The truth is, although it s supposed to be a closed camp, the gate at the back of this place is wide open and we are just walking in now. Once properly inside the camp, we were joined by a Palestinian man who was living in Syria before the war forced his family to flee. He agreed to interpret for us. ACTUALITY OF WILD ANIMALS MAN: This sound every night, same this sound. What is that noise? MAN: Animal maybe. Some wild animal? MAN: Yes, animal. I don t know which kind of animal, but every day same. Coming from that area, see. Now this area you will find minors, all underage. We re now approaching a gate in the wire fence here with some white metal containers on the other side - the kind of temporary structure you might find on a building site back home to give workers a place to rest and make tea. It doesn t look like the sort of place that was ever intended to house teenagers for months on end. ACTUALITY - KNOCK ON DOOR Hi there. MAN: Syria. These are from Syria. He is 16 and 7 months, from Shall I take my shoes off?

17 MAN 2: No. Are you sure? MAN 2: No problem. Okay. So you ve invited us into where you re staying here. Around me we ve got two bunk beds. How many of you are sharing this space here? MAN: Okay, four minors. Four of you. MAN: Yeah, four underage, yeah, only. your families? And are you all here in the camp on your own without MAN: Yeah, yeah, alone. Under the harsh electric light of the container, we get talking to a 16 year old from Damascus. We decide to call him Adil to protect his identity. He sports a curly black beard that looks out of place on such a boyish face. As a young Syrian woman watches from one of the bunk beds, incongruously dressed in a donated Ludlow School sweater, we hear yet another story of a family torn apart by conflict. ADIL [VIA INTERPRETER]: He lose his family at Damascus. that mean.? When you say you lost your family in Damascus, does ADIL [VIA INTERPRETER]: coming from Russian plane and his mother and father dead. Father and mother from Russian plane and a bomb

18 I m so sorry to hear that. The trauma of losing his parents a year earlier is clearly still very raw for Adil. He focuses his frustrations on the monotony of life in the camp, which consists of little more than eating what he says is terrible food, and sleeping. At 41 days, his stay at the hotspot has already breached the 25 days we ve been told was the legal limit for children to be detained. ADIL [VIA INTERPRETER]: Nobody cares. You can go, come. Nobody asks you. When he came, first reception bring him to this room and finish. Now he has too many things for example, water not working. He go to first reception please come to repair, we need maintenance. Nobody care. About 23 times he ask. Nobody care. Any problem, they told him, this is your responsibility, what you will do. The camp is already three times its capacity. In places, it s hard to find a path between all the tents that have gone up on the other side of the wire fence to where Adil is staying. This overcrowding of migrants from so many different communities has led to some violent tension. As a 16 year old on his own here, Adil says it s hard for him to sleep at night. When you think about the situation you re in now, do you ever regret having left Syria to come to a place like this? ADIL [VIA INTERPRETER]: Better in Syria for him. When he saw this country, this Samos, like this situation, he like to be in Syria. This is prison for us, because we want to go out of Greece. It s a warzone. But if you go home, you could die, like your parents. ADIL [VIA INTERPRETER]: food, nothing and no future - until now it s black. No future. At Samos, he think it s more than Syria, because no We wanted to speak to a minister in the Greek Government about conditions in the camp and why there were so few places in official shelters for young migrants. But we were let down on three separate occasions. We did though speak to European Commission spokesperson on migration, Natasha Bertaud, and I

19 KEMP cont: about the situation for migrant children in places like Samos. asked her whether there is concern at an EU level BERTAUD: We are very concerned and in fact this is something that we have been consistently raising with the Greek authorities, as this is something that the Commission feels very strongly about, that all children in need of international protection have a right to care and protection under both international and European law, and we are very concerned to make sure that is the case in Greece. We have seen and heard from children being detained illegally, longer than the 25 day legal limit that exists in Greece. What kind of oversight do you have of that? BERTAUD: Under European law, detention of any refugee and particularly of unaccompanied minors has to be only used as a very, very last resort and only for very limited periods of time. And from a legal perspective, in Greek law indeed it says that unaccompanied minors cannot be held for longer than 25 days, and the information that we have is that that is respected. The hotspots are not closed facilities, but what the Greek authorities are doing is issuing migrants - and that includes unaccompanied minors - with no travel orders, so they can t leave the island, but they can leave the hotspot asylum centres as they please. So that is the argument that s made, is it? Because they leave a gate open at the back of these hotspots, that then these children are not being detained illegally? BERTAUD: Well, in any case the children shouldn t, in most cases, be in hotspots unless it is in their interests. What we are trying to do is make sure there is always dedicated facilities that unaccompanied minors are transferred to, so that they are not left with the rest of the general population, and this is what we have been pushing the Greek authorities to ensure.

20 Many we spoke to in Greece told us that money wasn t the problem. Since the beginning of 2015, Greece has had 352 million euros in emergency assistance. The EU has given a further 198 million euros to NGOs providing emergency support. Some charities we spoke to said it wasn t always easy to see where the money had gone. ACTUALITY PLAYING POOL Others, like Praksis, a Greek NGO which runs a shelter on Samos, say it s not a lack of money, but excessive bureaucracy that s the problem. Praksis has room for 25 young migrants on the island, but when we take a tour of their accommodation with coordinator Alex Vallidis, we discover only 22 boys are currently being looked after. So we ve got a room here. VALLIDIS: We are using them as storage. So we ve got two bunkbeds. VALLIDIS: Three. total? But that s beds here that aren t being used three in VALLIDIS: Yes. We are pushing and pressing everybody to get their papers in two weeks. It s an output of a lot of pressure to get even in two or three weeks. How does it make you feel to see that? VALLIDIS: It s clearly a waste of space, clearly a waste of opportunities for the children that are accommodated in the camp.

21 And all the while there s potentially dozens of unaccompanied migrant children up in that camp, sleeping under the stars tonight. VALLIDIS: Seventy to eighty, we can say approximately. Back in his office, Alex explains that before filling a place, Praksis has to wait to get a formal referral from EKKA - that s the government agency responsible for providing social care to crisis-hit populations. But austerity has hit Greece s public services hard and the civil servants who survived the cuts are overstretched. VALLIDIS: Due to their bureaucracy and due to their understaffed service, sometimes we have to wait two months to get the children, which is really frustrating, because we cannot go there and take them from their camp. We need to have a specific placement from EKKA. And all because of bureaucracy? VALLIDIS: Capacity maybe it is a problem. What is the experience of the Greek Government to respond to a problem like this? ACTUALITY OF SAMOS PROTEST There has been widespread concern across Europe about the scale of migration and the threat from extremism that some have linked to it. It s no different in Samos, where there have been protests about how Greece is being left to shoulder the burden of the crisis. The Greek Government refused to respond to any of our points about how they re dealing with migrant children or about reasons for the delays in processing asylum applications. But Natasha Bertaud from the European Commission says progress has been made. BERTAUD: The efforts that Greece has made in the past two years have been herculean if you think that they only had, you know, around a hundred reception places to start with. They ve now got 70,000 reception places for refugees in the whole of Greece. But what we are still missing is enough dedicated accommodation places for

22 BERTAUD cont: unaccompanied minors, and this is something that we are working with our international partners to change. We have already created around 700 places for unaccompanied minors working with the UNHCR, and about another 150 working with Save the Children and Terre des Hommes, which is another NGO, and just in December of last year we signed an agreement with Unicef to create another 250 places for unaccompanied minors, so it is improving, but there is still a lot to be done. The effect of the EU-Turkey deal is that there are now approximately 60,000 migrants trapped in Greece with very little idea about when they will receive news about their asylum claims. Was the deal a mistake? BERTAUD: No one could sit idly by as people were drowning in the Aegean. You couldn t have an uncontrolled flow of people into a European Union member state to the extent that it was happening last year. The agreement has been effective in stopping that. We had 10,000 people a day arriving in October 2015 and now, since the agreement has been in place, less than a hundred arrive a day. But arguably that crisis has been replaced with another, hasn t it? These thousands of migrants who are trapped in Greece, waiting for news about their asylum claims, and one human rights lawyer that we spoke to said the situation for those migrants is now worse in 2017 than it was in 2015 when they could at least move on from Greece. BERTAUD: But it was an unmanageable situation to have people relocating themselves in a completely disorderly and illegal manner, just walking across the European Union. No one is saying that the crisis is over and there is not still a great deal of work to be done in Greece to improve the situation. There are more than two thousand unaccompanied migrant children though in Greece. When will those eligible be moved out of the country? BERTAUD: Unfortunately, I wish I was in a position to give you concrete timelines, but I m frankly not in a position to give that. All the European Union can do is continue with its combination of political pressure and financial and technical support to the Greek authorities to improve the situation as quickly as possible.

23 The European Commission set a target date of September this year for any migrant eligible for relocation to be transferred out of Greece. Perhaps cold comfort to the children we met [MUSIC]. But with youth comes optimism. Fifteen year old Bilal at the charity, Faros, is determined, whatever the odds, his future will be a bright one. It s not dream for me. I want to be in the future doctor. If I can t be doctor, I want to be engineer. If I can t be engineer, I want to be a lawyer. Well, you ve certainly got the brains for it. Yeah, of course [LAUGH] And the confidence. Yeah.