This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

An NGO helping migrant and refugee children in Greece has won the world’s biggest annual humanitarian award.

METAdrasi – Action for Migration and Development received the $2m (£1.6m) Hilton humanitarian prize for its “innovative approach to welcoming refugees and protecting unaccompanied minors”, the Conrad N Hilton Foundation said.

Peter Laugharn, the foundation’s president and CEO, told the Guardian: “METAdrasi … demonstrates the power of individuals to make a marked difference in the lives of migrants and refugees in Greece.”

Laugharn praised METAdrasi’s pursuit of common-sense solutions, including engaging translators “fluent in over 43 languages and dialects to help navigate extremely complicated policies and procedures”.

The frontline organisation was founded in 2009 with the aim of safeguarding the rights of people displaced by war or persecution. From the outset it placed particular emphasis on minors who had reached Greece alone either because they had lost or been separated from parents along the way.

The NGO has a permanent presence at all key entry points to Greece and acts as a safety net for unaccompanied children, transporting them from detention centres to suitable accommodation, finding guardians and placing them in foster care or in conditions of supported independent living. It employs 350 interpreters and has helped more than 12,000 minors.

METAdrasi’s founder, Lora Pappa, said of the award: “It will enable us to strengthen our advocacy and help us be heard. This is an ongoing crisis. We are so grateful to receive the prize at a time when urgent needs regarding the refugee situation continue to emerge.”

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates there are 80,000 people stranded in Greece, including 4,100 unaccompanied children.

The number of arrivals has dropped dramatically since 2016 when the EU struck a deal with Turkey but they are on the rise again.

On Lesbos, the eastern Aegean isle once at the centre of the crisis, 9,000 people are detained in a camp meant to house a third of that number.

This month, Turkey’s interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, raised the prospect of as many as 35,000 people a day crossing into Europe if Ankara were to turn a blind eye and open the floodgates. “I’m not threatening Europe, I am just pointing something out,” he warned, claiming that the EU had failed to deliver on its promise to give Turkey agreed funds under the 2016 accord.