Deputy Christiana Erotokritou, member of Cyprus’s delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, participated in the meeting of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons in Paris.
Within the framework of the discussion on finding alternative ways of providing care to unaccompanied underage migrants and refugees, Mrs. Erotokritou underlined that since 2016, the Republic of Cyprus has received more than 1,500 unaccompanied minor refugees and migrants. As she said, most of them are sent by Turkey, without the necessary legal papers, a fact that makes the examination of asylum requests difficult.
She also pointed out that in several cases, the traffickers force the migrants to destroy their documents before entering the Republic so as to request asylum as minors.
Mrs. Erotokritou stressed that traffickers must be brought before justice and be punished, noting that the over-loaded system of examining requests and the resources are too much for a small country like Cyprus.
