“Leila,” 11, and her sister “Magdoulin,” 12, have never been inside a classroom. Growing up in war-torn Syria, the only education the sisters, originally from Aleppo, had before fleeing their country six years ago was a private tutor during the two years they were displaced to Idlib province. “I want to become a doctor,” Leila told Human Rights Watch. “Other children can go to school while we don’t and that makes me sad.”

The family fled the country in 2017, arriving in April—via Turkey—on Chios, one of the five Aegean islands that have been the main entry point for Syrian and other asylum seekers into the European Union. Four months later, in August, the family of nine were still in Souda camp—where there was no formal school, no possibility of enrolling in a public school outside the camp, and no chance for the family to leave the island. The girls’ father, Omar, said he felt “sick” when he thought about his daughters’ situation and that of their two younger school-age brothers. “The lack of education was a main reason [for us] to leave Syria,” he said.

Under Greek law, formal education is compulsory for all 5 to 15-year-old children, and all children, including migrants and asylum seekers, have the right to enroll in public schools, even if they lack paperwork. As of July 5, 2018, nearly 17,700 asylum seekers—at least 5,300 of them children under 18—were stuck on the islands, 14,500 of them in overcrowded, government-run camps with a capacity of just over 6,300, according to Greek government data.

By law, these child asylum seekers have access to public education “for so long as an expulsion measure against them or their parents is not actually enforced,” and must be registered in school within three months of applying for asylum, or within one year if special language training is provided in the meantime to aid their access to public school.

But as this report documents, unmet government promises and harsh policies mean that the right to education for most child asylum seekers on the Aegean Islands is not being fulfilled.

Report by the Human Right Watch