In Mytilini, Lesvos the spring and summer months are accompanied by soaring temperatures, often lingering between 30 to 40 degrees celsius. For people on the move currently staying at the Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC) in Mytilini, a site which has encountered persistent infrastructural failures (IRC, 2023) and lacks adequate provisions, day-to-day life can be completely unbearable during these hottest months.

The CCAC in Mytilini, CCAC Mavrovouni, suffers from a severe lack of shade, non-functional or completely absent air-conditioning units, infrastructural failures, scabies outbreaks and unequal provision of sun protection items. To further exacerbate this, the CCAC is located on the coast, isolated a one hour walk away from the city, where its lack of vegetation leaves it completely exposed to the elements.

CCAC Mavrovouni’s location, alongside the difficult registration requirements for NGOs wishing to enter the camp, increases barriers to the access of services for people on the move in Lesvos. Collective Aid’s ‘Free Clothing Shop’, which opened July 22nd, aims to provide some relief to people on the move here through the distribution of light-weight and summer appropriate clothing to help cope with the high temperatures.

As you can see above, CCAC Mavrovouni is a blinding desert of white gravel, with grid-like rows of white tents and white sanitation containers. Fears over fires, due to the Moria camp destruction in 2020, means that there is a severe lack of foliage to provide either shade or the breaking up of the bright landscape. Located on the coast, the CCAC is on the frontlines of weather extremes with residents' access to shade next to none.

The CCAC has made no efforts to provide shade for the residents, and it has been left to small NGOs within the camp to construct shading areas near their offices. However, with occupancy ranging from 890 to 2,124 (UNHCR, 2024b) so far this summer these limited construction projects will not be enough. Protection from the heat is essential for health and wellbeing and therefore should be a priority of camp management and not left up to NGOs to fill the gaps. Currently the only easily accessible shade remains inside residents' stuffy and crowded housing units.

The housing units in the CCAC vary from so-called ISOBOXES; container homes reminiscent of those used for shipping, to steel tents, and rubb halls. ISOBOXES make up less than half of the housing units available and are the only type of housing with air conditioning (AC), although often broken (IRC, 2023). In practice, ISOBOXES are reserved solely for single women, unaccompanied minors, and some families.

For the rest of the families and the single men, there are steel tents and rubhalls which both lack any provision of AC. The steel tents are a single 17.5 square metre room (Better Shelter, 2024) and in CCAC Mavrovouni they house one to two families, or ten to twelve single men. The worst of all are the rubb halls; a larger communal form of accommodation, with rows of bunk beds inside a huge tent housing many men, women and children with a lack of privacy and poor hygiene conditions.

Health Concerns in CCAC Mavrovouni

The crowded housing conditions have led to a huge prevalence of scabies in the CCAC, with symptoms of itching worsened when the skin is warm or sweaty. Scabies is a highly contagious and intensely itchy rash caused by microscopic mites burrowing under the skin, and in the worst cases can lead to fatal sepsis. The prevalence of scabies means that the hot summer temperatures create huge discomfort for the many people infected, significantly impacting their quality of life.

Physical and environmental hygiene, including access to clean clothes, is essential in prevention of scabies but due to infrastructural failures leading to “a lack of access to sufficient water” (IRC, 2023), alongside crowded living conditions in the CCAC, this is near impossible. For those who have recently received positive decisions regarding their asylum claims, access to water provisions is completely denied regardless of their continued accommodation in the CCAC.

Water access is just one of many “significant and recurring” (IRC, 2023) infrastructural shortfalls within CCAC Mavrovouni, alongside issues with broken AC units and unequal provision of sun protection items. In 2023, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), alongside IHaveRights, reported that of the few housing units equipped with AC, many of the machines were “out of service and not repaired”(IRC, 2023). Access to temperature control in these summer months is incredibly important for people on the move, especially with so many people living together in one room.

Just as the access to AC systems is unequal, with only the ISOBOXES equipped, so is the provision of sun protection items. CCAC Mavrovouni recently began distributing sunscreen to families, however single men were excluded from this distribution. Unequal provision across the board now means that single men have been significantly underserved, excluded from access to AC to help cope with the heat and sunscreen for protection from the UV. This reveals a clear shortfall in serving people on the move in Lesvos, and is a gap in the system that Collective Aid is now working to fill.

The Collective Aid ‘Free Clothing Shop’ is a distribution centre set up like an ordinary clothing shop, where people on the move can come browse and select the clothing items that they need. The ‘Free Clothing Shop’ is a way to provide dignified access to essential clothing items and initially this distribution will be focused on serving men in the camp to meet the obvious gap in provisions.

The ‘Free Clothing Shop’ is located within the existing community centre ‘Parea’ which is just a 15 minutes walk from CCAC Mavrovouni. This community centre is home to ten other organisations which provide services ranging from legal and psychosocial support, to sports and laundry services for people on the move. Working alongside these organisations, Collective Aid aims to create a welcoming space where people on the move can learn about the services available to them. As well as this, the community centre provides the opportunity to take part in community events, working to minimise feelings of isolation and create a safe space outside of camp confines.

New Lesvos Camp: CCAC Vastria

Despite the downfalls of CCAC Mavrovouni, there is little hope for improvement; instead, conditions are likely to deteriorate further. A new CCAC is currently under construction in Vastria, an isolated, forested area thirty kilometres and nearly an hours drive from Mytilini. The CCAC only has a single dirt road to enter, significantly increasing the inaccessibility for people on the move, services, and emergency responders. Concerns about the high fire risk at the site have been raised repeatedly, with the likelihood that a fire would be deadly.

It remains unclear whether NGOs will be permitted to operate within the CCAC but the remote location removes people’s ability to access essential services in the city such as healthcare, education and legal support; forcing people to remain in a prison-like environment which could be described as de facto detention. Thus we call on authorities to cease all work on the new CCAC due to fire risk and ensure healthy and safe living conditions for all arrivals to Lesvos. Summer months in CCAC Vastria could prove not only unbearable but, with the high risk of forest fires, potentially deadly.

Words by Rebecca Macivor

Under the Scorching Sun: Inadequate Living Conditions in the Lesvos CCAC.