The Smell of Human Rights Decaying

21st December 2023

The smell of the dirty latrines is something I will never forget. It almost knocked me off my feet the first time I experienced it. The families whose tents were only a few meters away seemed not to have gotten used to the stench, even though they had lived in the new refugee camp for nearly a year. In the summer of 2021, I volunteered to go to Lesbos, Greece, to work in the new refugee camp built as a replacement after Moria had burned down in September the year before.

Lesbos lies right in front of the Turkey’s shore. Around three quarters of the island is encompassed by the Turkish mainland. For those coming to Turkey after being forced to leave their home country due to war, terror or individual persecution, Lesbos is their ticket to enter the European Union and claim asylum. For as long as the EU has existed, Lesbo has acted as somewhat of a gateway. For many refugees this island constituted the first point of entry. The infamous refugee camp Moria, sometimes referred to as the “graveyard of human rights”, was founded in 2013 on an old military base next to the small town with the same name in a steep valley. The old Moria was bursting out of its seams. The camp was constructed to harbor around 5.000 people at any given time. Shortly before the fire engulfed the entire infrastructure of the camp without taking a single life, around 20.000 people lived in the camp. Due to the lack of space, some had to resort to set up their tents outside of camp in the fields nearby. 

The new camp was set up at the shore of Lesbos on a level surface. Considering the topography of such a camp is detrimental since old people, pregnant women, sick people, young children and traumatized people are the ones who will walk along these trails and roads for as long as they will be living in the camp. And that might be for a long time. On average most people will be forced to stay in the camp for two years until their application is fully processed. Sometimes it takes less time, sometimes it takes more time. The people living in the camp are confined to its boundaries as they are not permitted to leave on a regular basis, with few exceptions. Living in old Moria was like living in hell, I was told by those who could draw the comparison. The new Moria seemed to be a great improvement as only 3.000 people were now living in a space that was double in size of the old camp. But what does two years of living in an improved hell look like?

For this question to be answered sensibly you would need to ask someone who lived there as a refugee and not someone privileged enough to be able to choose to work there and leave it again after a month. What I can answer is the question of how working in an improved hell looks like. You see people rot away before your eyes. The worst is noticing that the process happening to young children who, after being deprived of education, functioning sanitary facilities, a warm home and the safety of an organized community for a sustained period, fall into a deep depression. Disgust and repulsion set in when you smell the living conditions people are forced to exist in even though there are more than enough resources in the EU to ensure clean facilities. If you are able to speak Persian, you will hear how some people have been stranded on this island for over four years without any information on when they’ll be able leave as the people in charge refuse to tell them anything. Four years of waiting around having your life wasted away. Four years of not being able to work, provide for your family or have a real home. Four years of being unsure if the police will show up at your door tomorrow morning to deport you. Four years of hell or an improved hell gnaw at the soul.

Working in an improved hell is an improved nightmare, but a nightmare, nonetheless. However, it is a necessity if you want to understand why the EU, an organization priding itself as being a champion of human rights decided to bury those rights on an otherwise insignificant island at the outskirts of its realm. If you want to work in the field of refugee aid you need to face the lived in reality of the people you are trying to aid. Humanitarian aid cannot be accomplished if those in charge never step away from their comfortable desks in their air-conditioned offices. I wonder how fast the living conditions would change if the political elite of the EU were forced to use the same lavatories as the people living in the new Moria.