The National Centre of Social Solidarity (NCSS) reported on Wednesday that some 4,962 unaccompanied refugee children currently live in Greece with approximately 1,200 of them gone missing.
"This is the most shocking data" notes Gabriel Sakellaridis, Greece Director of Amnesty International, "as the missing children are most likely exposed to serious perils, wandering beyond and away from official protection systems."
According to the National Centre of Social Solidarity only one in four children are accommodated in humane conditions.
The main problems these children face concern very limited access to basic housing, food and water, and lack of legal representation and organisations.
"Some 1,117 unaccompanied minors live at the Moria hotspot (Lesvos island), of whom 140 live in long-term accommodation facilities and 350 in slightly better facilities there, yet none of them have access to translators, welfare officers or psychologists," said Elina Sarantou of HIAS, a Jewish-American nonprofit organisation that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees.
Nearly half of all recorded refugee population in 2018 were children, say international humanitarian organisations, while in Greece children continue to account for one third of all migrant arrivals, according to 2019 figures so far.
