August 9, 2016
Nematollah and Ouranoos welcomed us inside their tent. It’s been more than five months since they and their four children arrived in Malakasa, a camp 40km north of Athens, mainly hosting Afghan asylum seekers like them.
They fled to Europe in search of a safer place. Instead, when the rest of Europe shut its borders without offering alternatives, they found themselves trapped in Greece.
As Afghans they have limited legal ways out of Greece. Unlike Syrians, for example, Afghans are not eligible for the relocation emergency programme adopted by the EU last year, which pledged 66,400 places in different European countries for asylum-seekers stranded in Greece.
According to a recent UNHCR study more than 70% of Afghans left because of the war and are by far the second largest nationality of refugees stranded in Greece, after Syrians. But Afghans do not have access to the EU relocation programme, because only nationalities which exceed the average asylum acceptance threshold in Europe can apply, and Afghans do not meet this criteria.
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