Since launching its medical activities responding to the urgent needs of new arrivals of people on Samos and Lesvos, MSF has received repeated accounts of patients’ lives endangered by violence and pushbacks. People report being beaten, strip-searched, subjected to intrusive body searches, have their possessions confiscated and informally detained for a period of hours or days. At the Aegean Sea borders, people are prevented from reaching Greek shores by making waves around migrants’ boats or towing their vessels out of Greek waters. If people do manage to land on a Greek island and are found, they are usually apprehended and taken back out to sea and placed in rafts. All forced returns violate Greek and EU law and International Refugee Law, and the use of violence, arbitrary detention, and apprehension are also clear violations of people’s human rights.



MSF has now finalized a report based on medical and operational data, as well as testimonies by MSF teams, in Samos and Lesvos between 2021 and 2023. Information by MSF outlines the violence and human costs of border management practices. Despite the extensive documentation of forced returns and other violent practices at Greece’s borders, EU and Greek authorities continue to deny these violations. Within this environment, MSF acknowledges that another report outlining border violence is not going to change the systematic illegal practices. However, it puts on public and institutional record MSF’s experiences providing assistance at Greece’s Aegean borders, through a humanitarian and medical lens, while outlining what we have treated and witnessed, and the physical and mental harm caused. This information will add to the collective pressure for political and legal accountability and offer essential data for other actors to utilise. Speaking out becomes even more important considering the shrinking humanitarian space, criminalization of humanitarian actors and recurrent attempts from authorities to silence the voices of civil society organizations.