Greece facing refugee crisis

Jovana Mastilovic
Lesvos (Greece) July 2017
More than one million people, mostly originating from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan arrived in Europe in 2015 to seek asylum. The majority of these people crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece with over half a million people arriving on the Greek island, Lesvos. In response, the European Commission published an European Agenda on Migration, which enforced ‘hotspot’ facilities at the external borders of the EU; there are five in Greece—on the islands of Chios, Kos, Leros, Lesvos and Samos, and four in Italy in Lampedusa, Pozzallo, Taranto and Trapani. These centers are reserved spaces where the initial reception, identification and registration of all asylum seekers now arriving to Europe occur.
In July 2017, I visited the Moria Identification and Reception Center on Lesvos, which is the largest ‘hotspot’ facility on Lesvos, where according to the Head of the Regional Asylum Office, approximately 3000 of the

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