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In this report we seek to survey how the bodies of migrants who die or go missing in their effort to cross the Aegean Sea are managed in Greece, and what laws, policies and practices are in place to ensure that the dead are identified and families informed. Our research focuses on the Greek island of Lesbos, one of the key entry points to Europe for migrants and refugees during the recent crisis, and close to of which a number of deadly shipwrecks have occurred. Our aim is to both identify apparent deficiencies in current approaches to migrant fatalities in Greece, as well as noting where good practice exists that should be duplicated. We identify a policy vacuum around the problem, marked by a lack of cooperation among different state agencies and the absence of standard operating procedures. The impacts of this vacuum have been exacerbated by the extreme resource constraints in Lesbos, and the very large number of both living migrants and dead migrant bodies to be addressed. In managing bodies after deadly shipwrecks, we identified a number of flaws stemming from this policy vacuum, including the absence of effective investigation to identify the deceased; a failure to effectively collect and manage post-mortem data; limited efforts to assist families when they arrive on the island to search for their loved ones; until recently, the lack of a standardized process of numbering and burying the dead at local cemeteries; the lack of international cooperation; and the absence of a provision for outreach to collect ante-mortem data from families in third countries.
Such limitations, coupled with the complex nature of this humanitarian challenge, have led to most of the victims of deadly shipwrecks being buried unidentified with limited provision for future identification. This has an adverse psychological impact on the families: in the absence of certainty about the fate of their loved ones, relatives are trapped in a state of ambiguity condemning them to unresolved loss, and resulting stress and anxiety. To help local authorities effectively deal with this humanitarian problem and assist families in their quest for truth, we offer a number of policy recommendations. We recommend that the Greek authorities establish a ‘humanitarian commission’ mandated to oversee and coordinate efforts of national and local authorities, and to liaise with families of the dead and missing to collect data from them that could facilitate future identifications. Acknowledging the transnational nature of the problem, we argue that that the effective management of the problem of missing migrants is not merely the responsibility of the local or even Greek authorities; rather a demonstration that regional and pan-European solidarity is needed. To this end a ‘global architecture’ is required to collect and store both ante- and post-mortem data concerning missing migrants from a range of sources, including European states and families in migrants’ countries of origin.
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