By Natalie Nagorski
MORIA, Greece – The first thing migrants notice when they set foot in Moria camp is the stench of raw sewage pouring into a nearby trash-filled ditch. The stream of green waste water races along the border of the camp, casting a smell across the place once called “the worst refugee camp on earth.”
In September 2018, the International Rescue Committee reported that there were 72 people per functioning toilet and 84 people per functioning shower at Moria camp. Since then, a team of 10 volunteers from the Watershed Foundation has spent its days building sanitation systems.
Moria camp is a formal Greek military base, which has housed close to 10,000 migrants at some points over the past four years. After an agreement between the EU and Turkey to return refugees to Turkey was enacted in 2016, the transfer process slowed at Moria, making it more difficult for residents to leave the camp. Officially dubbed a “transfer site,” Moria has become a long-term solution for many. Conditions at the camp have suffered from the backlog in the transfer process.
“I can’t even think about being a woman in Moria and going to the toilet in the middle of the night,” Aphrodite Vati Mariola said about her concerns surrounding sexual assault in the camp. Mariola manages a hotel in Lesbos, and helped many migrants when they landed on the island.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), about 180 women reported being sexually assaulted in 2017 alone, after arriving on the island in Greece.
Thanks to the growing number of transfers out of the camp and additional aid from the Watershed Foundation, there are now roughly 50 people per toilet. With 5,500 migrants living at the camp and in a neighboring olive grove, the site of an overflow campsite, there are 120 toilets.
The UNHCR recommends that refugee camps should have no more than 20 people per toilet in post-emergency situations, aiming for five migrants per facility. That means Moria would need to more than double the number of facilities in order the meet the standards of the organization overseeing its operations.
Although the number of the migrants at the camp has decreased in the last year, the numbers of families and children at the camp have risen. The so-called “transfer site” houses unaccompanied minors who have not left in a year.
A shared toilet for unaccompanied male minors at Moria camp. This is allegedly one of the best facilities for the inhabitants
During a recent tour of Moria camp, Princeton University students saw one of the newly constructed showers in the camp. The shower consists of a hose next to a toilet. Although representatives of the Watershed Foundation did not respond to an official request for comment about the number of showers in the camp, they suggested that the ratio of showers to inhabitants is still low. According to Paul Goodwin, a volunteer at the camp, many of the showers do not have hot water, even when temperatures drop below freezing.
Goodwin also reported that there are 78 showers at the camp, 40 showers fewer than the UNHCR reported in 2017. “There is a main shower block with 15 male and 15 female showers in the camp,” Goodwin said, “Olive Grove has 10 showers and then there are 38 of the toilet/shower combined stalls.”
In September 2018, Lesbos public health inspectors declared the Moria detention center “dangerous for public health and the environment.” Regional governor Chrisinana Kalogirou set a 30-day deadline to improve the broken sewage pipes, overflowing garbage bins, and stagnant water and flies in the toilets.
Following the ultimatum, the Greece Ministry of Migration paid a 100,000-euro fine for poor living conditions at both Moria and refugee camps on the island of Chios. After that 30-day period, inspectors implemented sanctions on Lesbos, citing the waste spill at the entrance to the camp and the broken waste pipes creating a stench across the camp.
Caption: As the Princeton Journalism Seminar witnessed last Thursday, many of these conditions are still present at Moria, including the wastewater spill outside of the camp.
When the group walked through the camp, one refugee approached the students, asking if they spoke French. He said, “We are like prisoners here. The things we eat, the way we are treated, we are like prisoners here.”
