Abandoned in Lesbos: UK delays leave teenage refugee homeless after fire

“When I saw the smoke coming I didn’t have the chance to get my backpack, I just ran. The fire was very close, I couldn’t save anything, I lost all my documents. I just escaped through the forest.”

Ahmed looks nervously around as he talks about the catastrophe he has just lived through: the fire that destroyed the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos. Around him people are going about their daily lives in the island capital Mytilene, drinking coffee and chatting in the sunshine. But today the Syrian teenager is focused on the basics of survival. “Do you know where I can buy clothes?” he asks. It has been a week since the fire and he only has what he is wearing.

The 18-year-old is just one of thousands of people made homeless by the fire, many of them sleeping on roadsides and in petrol station forecourts. But Ahmed shouldn’t have been in Moria when the flames started rising – he should have been in the UK with his family.

Four months ago, with the help of lawyers and the charity Safe Passage, Ahmed won the right to join his family under EU family reunion law. His brother and cousins are waiting for him in a market town in the north of England.

Instead he is here, searching for food on the streets after Home Office delays kept him in limbo in Lesbos.

Such delays are common in family reunion cases, but Ahmed is confused about why he is still here. “I’ve been waiting for the ticket to join my family in the UK,” he says. “Every week they say God willing it will be this week, or next week; we are waiting. My family can’t do anything to help me. It’s only the government who can.”

Senior Labour politicians told the Guardian that the Home Office should act immediately to bring Ahmed to the UK. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is a truly awful situation involving a child who has been granted a legal right to travel. Ministers must live up to their promises and responsibilities. Unaccompanied children are in some of the worst conditions imaginable in Lesbos. The government needs to act swiftly to right this wrong”

In January the Guardian met Ahmed – then at just 17 an unaccompanied minor – in the dirty and dangerous shanty town that had grown up around the infamous Moria camp. He was already impatient at the slow process of his claim, keen to show his bleak home: a tarpaulin strung from trees which he shared with friends. “When it’s cold, we just lie close together.”

Ahmed has high hopes for his long dreamed of life in the UK. “I want to study engineering,” he says, “then I’d like to use those skills so I can offer support to areas and places which have been destroyed by war.”

The fire is not the first catastrophe Ahmed has lived through. He grew up near Aleppo and saw bombs destroy his house. Last year his parents decided he should try to escape to Europe. He crossed the Turkish border on foot, seeing a friend shot dead by border guards, and when he arrived in Moria he had nightmares that left him screaming.

Related: Refugees demand rescue from Lesbos after Moria camp blaze

“The UK has a long and proud history of welcoming those in need and escaping persecution,” a Home Office spokesperson said. “Throughout the pandemic the UK has remained ready to receive those accepted for transfer under the Dublin regulation. We remain in regular contact with sending member states, including Greece, who are responsible for arranging transfers.”

But Beth Gardiner-Smith, CEO of Safe Passage International, the organisation trying to help Ahmed reach his brother, says the UK needs to work with the Greek authorities to ensure he can reach his family. “Unaccompanied child refugees like Ahmed have the legal right to travel to the UK to be reunited with family … but children are often made to wait for months before this can happen.

“Although Ahmed’s application was accepted in May, he is still waiting to be moved to the UK and other children are in a similar situation. We urge the UK government to work with the Greek authorities to ensure that these children are reunited with family in the UK as a matter of urgency.”

The Greek authorities play a role in arranging Dublin transfers. They were approached for comment and had not responded by the time of publication. The UK Home Office has also been approached for comment.

Ahmed’s plight is all the more vital for campaigners to highlight because it is part of a wider battle. Family reunion law itself is set to be lost when the UK leaves the EU.

Former child refugee and Labour peer Alf Dubs has led the campaign to preserve the right to family reunion.

Lord Dubs has sponsored an amendment to the immigration bill requesting the government keep the protections offered by the EU’s Dublin regulations and the amendment is currently back before the House of Lords. While the UK has its own laws for bringing family together, campaigners warn they are far more restrictive, applying only to British citizens bringing children or spouses.

Safe Passage say most of the young people it has helped come to the UK in recent years under Dublin family reunion rules have joined uncles, aunts and siblings. These transfers would not have been possible under UK law alone. It warns that 95% of its cases would have no enforceable right to reunite under the UK’s own immigration rules.

Dubs told the Guardian that the UK must act urgently: “It cannot be right that Ahmed, who has already endured so much and has now lost everything in the Moria refugee camp fire, is still waiting to join his family in the UK. Those with loved ones waiting for them in the UK should be allowed to join them as soon as possible.”

• Some personal details have been changed