Ritsona, Greece — Since 2022, the German collective Rosa Rolling Safespace has been providing a mobile safe space for women living in refugee camps around Athens. Their work shows that gender-based violence in these settings is not incidental but structural, a direct product of European and Greek migration policies.

Ritsona is a small town about 47 miles north of Athens. Driving through the surrounding countryside, it is hard to miss a sprawling cluster of gray containers encircled by barbed wire, surveillance cameras, and heavy metal gates monitored by police. It is one of the largest refugee camps in mainland Greece — according to

the latest data

released by the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum, it has a nominal capacity of nearly 3,000 people.

Around the camp, hills and wind turbines stretch as far as the eye can see, occasionally interrupted by some industrial facilities breaking the monotony of the empty countryside. Once a week, however, a small dusty lot a few hundred meters from the camp’s main entrance comes to life.

Rosa Rolling Safespace setting up outside Ritsona camp. Photo contributed by Romanos Lioutas.

It is a Wednesday, and around midday two white vans appear at the far end of the long road running alongside the Ritsona camp. They park in the lot, and a group of about ten volunteers immediately get to work setting up a safe space for the women living inside.

Within half an hour, tables with hot and cold drinks, sewing machines, books, and children’s toys appear under a gazebo and a large yellow tent. The back of the larger van swings open, revealing a mobile medical clinic stocked with pads, tampons, and other essential supplies.

Medical truck brought to Ritsona camp by Rosa Rolling Safespace. Photo contributed by Romanos Lioutas.

Medical truck with supplies brought to Ritsona camp by Rosa Rolling Safespace. Photo contributed by Romanos Lioutas.

Sewing machines getting set up at Ritsona camp by volunteers from Rosa Rolling Safespace. Photo contributed by Romanos Lioutas.

The volunteers are part of

Rosa Rolling Safespace

, a self-funded German collective that has been operating in mainland Greece since 2022.

“The project started from the understanding that women experience different forms of violence,” said Ari, one of the volunteers. “Everyone who migrates is subjected to structural violence, but being a woman in this context adds specific layers.”

Every week, the vans travel between the camps of Ritsona, Malakasa, Oinofyta, and Thiva, all located in the greater Athens area. The collective provides mobile medical care, a community space, and a dedicated children’s area.

Ari explains that many women in the camps have no points of reference and often lack the time and energy to seek help when they need it. “The medical truck and the community space work together precisely for this reason,” she said. “Women come every week, sit down, talk with us. Our goal is to build trust, so they know there is a safe space they can always come back to if they need help.”

Rosa Rolling Safespace operates from a parking lot outside the camp partly as a deliberate political choice. “We don’t want to support this oppressive system,” said Ari. “We reject the way the European asylum system is designed and the effects it has on people. We don’t want to be complicit in it.”

Rosa Rolling Safespace set up outside Ritsona camp. Photo contributed by Romanos Lioutas.

But it is also a bureaucratic necessity. In 2020, the Greek government introduced

mandatory registration

for organizations seeking to operate inside the camps. The process — costly and discretionary — effectively pushed out most independent groups, forcing them to work on the margins of the system. The result has been a double vacuum: fewer services for camp residents, and less independent monitoring of what happens inside.

This is not an accident. The current structure of refugee camps in Greece took shape with the EU’s

hotspot approach

, introduced in 2015 in response to arrivals by sea from Turkey. Originally designed as spaces for rapid identification and processing on the Aegean islands, hotspots gradually became containment facilities.

In 2016, the

closure of borders

by Macedonia, Croatia, and Slovenia left tens of thousands of people stranded in Greece, giving authorities a pretext to set up what were framed as emergency structures but have since become permanent.

The

EU-Turkey deal of March 2016 …