On 30 November 2020, the Greek New Democracy government enacted a new confidentiality law that prevents NGO and government workers, as well as volunteers, from publicly discussing anything they see in refugee camps. As this would include complaints of abuse, the new law renders accountability of public officials more difficult. This is the latest step in the government’s crackdown on humanitarian organisations serving the refugee population, which has intensified over the last year.
Although the implementation of the new law is still unclear, the ban is intended to curtail the essential role that humanitarian organisations play in denouncing abuse and pressuring authorities to act in the face of human rights violations. These aid organisations are also crucial in terms of filling the void of services and assistance that authorities are unwilling or unable to provide. The new law follows a regulation passed last summer that targeted humanitarian and civil society organisations on the ground. It required them to officially register by fulfilling a series of strict requirements, including funding criteria, thus preventing many organisations from continuing their operations. Eventually, the government asked 22 organisations to cease operating in the country as they failed to meet the deadline to register amid the hurdles imposed by the pandemic. For others, their work was severely undermined as they had to devote their already strained resources to gather the materials for registration. The Council of Europe’s Expert Council on NGO Law found the requirements “excessively cumbersome” and the legislation “unreasonable and disproportionate,” constituting “a de facto bar on legitimate NGO activity”.
LIFE IN THE CAMPS
One of the most dire consequences of the new law is that it prevents public disclosure of abuse by workers, which means that only officials can deal with such allegations. Thus, authorities are relieved from public pressure to address widely-denounced unsafe conditions such as overcrowding, inadequate infrastructures, deplorable sanitary conditions, and lack of food and water supplies. Human rights organisations have repeatedly raised concerns about the situation in the camps, including numerous reports of physical and gender-based violence and detention of children. The destructive fire that took place in September in the large camp of Moria, the ensuing tensions and protests, and the ravaging effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in the camps are the latest manifestations of a failed policy to address immigration that has progressively shifted towards and fed into open anti-immigration sentiments.
CRIMINALISING SOLIDARITY
These laws and regulations add to the ongoing process of criminalisation of humanitarian NGOs and grassroots efforts assisting migrants. This phenomenon takes place not just in Greece, but elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Organisations providing search and rescue operations and bringing rescued migrants to Italy, Spain, and Malta have faced legal battles, impoundments of NGO ships, and a growing anti-immigrant discourse underpinned by accusations that NGOs are abetting smuggling.
As we head into the winter, thousands of refugees are living in makeshift tents at overcrowded, unsanitary camps, this year with the added risk of contracting Covid-19. At the same time, the tightening of asylum laws over the last few years—and the decried temporary suspension of asylum during last spring—has left thousands trapped at the camps in the islands and mainland.
The new confidentiality law tops off a longstanding strategy of opacity around camps aimed at eliminating “civil society oversight of [the government’s] failed and inhumane policies”. Silencing humanitarian organisations’ efforts to provide visibility to the struggles of refugees as a result of those policies clears the way for even more neglect and abuse of human rights, and it is a step that no democratic, rule-of-law, international human rights-abiding regime should be taking.
Amalia Ordóñez Vahí was previously a Fulbright scholar at New York University, where she graduated with an MA in International Relations. She spent most of 2020 interning at the Open Society Foundations' Justice Initiative working on cases related to COVID-19, human rights, and detention. She has also interned in refugee representation at Human Rights First, and holds an MA in Conference Interpreting from the University of Manchester. She is currently a cultural diplomacy fellow in New York, while she pursues an MA in Human Rights.