More aid agencies working to alleviate conditions of refugees and migrants arriving in Greece said they were joining a boycott of detention centres on Wednesday, angered at an EU deal they say runs roughshod over human rights.
Human rights organisations are incensed at a pact between the EU and Turkey under which hundreds of new arrivals have been detained since Sunday, for fast-tracking registration and asylum applications.
Those refugees or migrants who fail will be sent back to Turkey.
Aid agencies said cooperating with the Greeks at detention centres would make them complicit to a practice which was ‘unfair and inhumane’.
UN refugee agency UNHCR and aid organisation Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a major contributor to the relief effort, announced they would be cutting back assistance on Tuesday.
Two other aid agencies joined them on Wednesday.
"The IRC alerted the Greek coast guard on Monday that we would not transport the world’s most vulnerable people to a place where their freedom of movement is impeded upon," said Lucy Carrigan, a regional spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
The IRC will continue to support those at another makeshift camp, she said. The Norwegian Refugee Council, a major non-governmental organisation, said on Wednesday it was suspending most of its activities within a detention centre on the Greek island of Chios.
"We are extremely close to be in a position where this site is dangerously overcrowded ...We have a large number of refugees including pregnant women and children lying on the concrete floor in the reception hall," said Dan Tyler, a protection adviser for the council.
Human rights organisations are incensed at a pact between the EU and Turkey under which hundreds of new arrivals have been detained since Sunday, for fast-tracking registration and asylum applications.
Those refugees or migrants who fail will be sent back to Turkey.
Aid agencies said cooperating with the Greeks at detention centres would make them complicit to a practice which was ‘unfair and inhumane’.
UN refugee agency UNHCR and aid organisation Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a major contributor to the relief effort, announced they would be cutting back assistance on Tuesday.
Two other aid agencies joined them on Wednesday.
"The IRC alerted the Greek coast guard on Monday that we would not transport the world’s most vulnerable people to a place where their freedom of movement is impeded upon," said Lucy Carrigan, a regional spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
The IRC will continue to support those at another makeshift camp, she said. The Norwegian Refugee Council, a major non-governmental organisation, said on Wednesday it was suspending most of its activities within a detention centre on the Greek island of Chios.
"We are extremely close to be in a position where this site is dangerously overcrowded ...We have a large number of refugees including pregnant women and children lying on the concrete floor in the reception hall," said Dan Tyler, a protection adviser for the council.
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