In Pictures
Rare look at life inside Lesbos’ Moria refugee camp
Images capture living conditions the Greek island’s largest camp, home to thousands of refugees and migrants.
Lesbos, Greece – In March 2016, the European Union and Turkey signed a controversial deal to prevent refugees and migrants from reaching Europe.
The agreement came after more than 46,000 refugees had reached the Greek Island of Lesbos in just the two months before it. In April 2016, the month after the deal was reached, the number dropped to 1,766, according to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR).
As part of the agreement, the Greek government confined refugees and migrants to five islands for the duration of their asylum process.
Today, it is estimated that more than 7,600 asylum seekers live on Lesbos.
Some 5,000 of them live in extremely poor conditions in Moria, the largest camp on the island which has previously been described by some as a “prison“.
In November 2017, Lesbos Mayor Spyros Galinos had warned that the island and other border areas could be turning into “concentration camps, where all human dignity is denied”.
These images give a rare sight on the conditions inside Moria camp, where journalists cannot enter without the prior agreement of authorities.
