Greek volunteers Efi Latsoudi and Konstantinos Mitragas on behalf of the Hellenic Rescue Team (HRT) became on Monday the latest in a long line of distinguished everyday heroes to receive UNHCR’s prestigious annual Nansen Refugee Award. Both winners of the UN Refugee Agency’s humanitarian prize helped thousands of refugees arriving on Greek shores during the 2015 refugee and migrant crisis – saving lives during treacherous sea crossings and providing a safe haven for the most vulnerable after they reached land.
The award recognizes Latsoudi and the HRT’s work and that of all volunteers in Greece and Europe in 2015, when Europe faced its biggest refugee crisis in decades, as over one million people arrived during the year. Over 850,000 people reached Greece by sea, with more than 500,000 of these arriving on the island of Lesvos alone. “This award is a recognition of a conscious decision not to deny to vulnerable human beings that arrived in Lesvos, and to those who did not make it, their dignity,” Latsoudi said, after she accepted the Nansen medal from UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi at a ceremony in central Geneva. “All that we have achieved with solidarity, we need to defend it now”, she said.
Latsoudi is one of the founders of PIKPA village on Lesvos. Formerly a children’s summer camp, it was transformed in 2012 with the help of local authorities into a safe haven for vulnerable refugees. By the 2015 crisis, PIKPA was hosting around 600 refugees a day, despite a capacity of just 150. In the past four years, PIKPA village has helped over 30,000 refugees.
Mitragas leads a team of more than 2,000 HRT volunteers, who have been rescuing people from the Aegean Sea and Greek mountains since 1978. In 2015, the volunteers worked 24-hour days, responding to endless rescue calls in the middle of the night. During this time they undertook 1,035 rescue operations, saving 2,500 lives, and assisted more than 7,000 people to safety.
“From the first time we saw human beings in extreme danger, for us there was no second thought, we just helped them,” Mitragas said, accepting the award on behand of 2,000 HRT volunteers.
“We never sought recognition. We are truly satisfied just with the smile of the rescued person, this is our reward”, he concluded.