‘SOCIAL-DISTANCING IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE IN A REFUGEE CAMP’

Amelia Cooper, 25, from Hertfordshire, is currently volunteering with Legal Centre Lesvos, helping refugees in Greece during the pandemic. LCL is supported by the charity Help Refugees.

Last week, in Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos, a little boy queued up to wash his hands at a new, makeshift tap. He is one of approximately 7,000 children out of 20,000 people who currently live in the camp – almost seven times the number it was built for. With such chronic overcrowding, the risk of a catastrophe is only too evident.

I volunteer with Legal Centre Lesvos, and we have been monitoring and reporting on the human rights abuses that are happening due to the Greek government’s Covid-19 response. While the lockdown has, so far, successfully contained the virus, the measures have been used as cover to disproportionately target migrants – and are making it harder to track human rights abuses.

In Moria camp, the largest on the island, the basic ways to keep safe – stay home, self-isolate, wash our hands – are near impossible. This is a place where families of six sleep in three square metres, and where tents are almost on top of each other. Soap and water is limited and, in parts of the camp, more than 1,300 people share a single tap.

If (and I hope that it’s an ‘if’, rather than a ‘when’) coronavirus hits Moria camp – as it has in camps elsewhere in Greece – it will spread like wildfire. Migrants are being deliberately confined in dire conditions, at risk of an uncontrollable outbreak of the disease, and little institutional effort is being made to protect them. I hope the work we’re doing will change this.

To donate or volunteer with Help Refugees, visit helprefugees.org