A full report has been requested from all state services and institutions involved - including the Police, Social Welfare Services, and the Deputy Ministries of Social Welfare and Migration - following the case of a Lebanese family with minor children who were left without accommodation while seeking international protection.
The request was made on Monday by the House Committee on Human Rights, which examined the case on its own initiative. The eight-member family had applied for international protection and was under a regime of imminent repatriation when they were reportedly left homeless.
'Difficult case'
Committee chair Irene Charalambidou said she personally contacted the Police after being informed by a citizen that the family were on the streets. She said she had seen images of children sleeping on suitcases, stressing that the Republic of Cyprus “cannot violate human dignity and subject young children to such hardship”.
Deputy Minister for Migration Nicholas Ioannides told the committee that the case had been difficult to manage due to a series of different requests made by the family since their arrival in Cyprus from Lebanon in August 2022.
According to Ioannides, the family initially applied for international protection from the Republic of Cyprus, later expressed a wish to be relocated to another EU member state, and when that request was rejected sought to return to Lebanon. They subsequently submitted a fresh asylum application in Cyprus.
No accomodation
In remarks after the meeting, Ioannides said the successive changes in the family’s status had placed a “disproportionate burden on services”, resulting in the family being left without accommodation while awaiting return to Lebanon. He described the incident as isolated and said efforts were under way, in cooperation with the relevant departments, to prevent similar occurrences.
He also told the committee that, once new EU-standard reception centres currently under development are completed, appropriate, sufficient and separate facilities will be available to accommodate those due to depart Cyprus. “We will have more modern infrastructure in place to better manage each case,” he said, adding that gaps would be identified and addressed.
It was further heard that, after Charalambidou contacted the Police, efforts were made to arrange accommodation at the Kofinou Reception Centre. Ioannides explained, however, that legislation requires asylum seekers to be kept separate from third-country nationals who are due to depart.
Something 'clearly not working'
Director General of the Deputy Ministry of Social Welfare Giannis Nicolaides said there is daily cooperation with the Deputy Ministry of Migration in such cases and that the handling of this family’s case was carried out with the necessary sensitivity. When informed that accommodation at Kofinou was not legally possible, he said he instructed that temporary lodging be arranged at a hotel.
AKEL MP Giorgos Koukoumas, who is set to assume the committee’s chairmanship, supported the call for a written report on the incident. “Clearly something did not function properly,” he said, referring to what he described as a “bureaucratically rigid process” when the status of a third-country national in Cyprus changes.
In separate statements after the session, Charalambidou said it was unacceptable for children to be left on the streets due to a lack of coordination between authorities. “Whatever is happening, the state must respect human dignity,” she said, stressing the need to identify where communication failures had occurred.
DISY MP Rita Superman said the state has an absolute obligation to safeguard the welfare of vulnerable persons. Independent MP Alexandra Attalides added that state services must adjust their working pace, noting that welfare-related issues — whether concerning citizens, asylum seekers or others — “do not stop at midday, but require attention at any time of day”.