Refugees on Aegean islands live in squalid conditions

Twenty thousand asylum seekers have arrived in Greece this year and are forced to remain on Aegean islands, where local authorities are overwhelmed.

Aid organisations are attempting to help, but asylum seekers in Greece are being forced to wait in squalid conditions, without proper sanitation or even shelter, for months – if not years – waiting for their applications to be processed.

At the Moria camp, currently at three times its capacity, authorities say overcrowding has let to uncontrollable amounts of waste and sewage.

Doctors Without Borders has set up surgery centre outside the camp and other aid groups are installing sanitation and electricity, but the local government can only provide the latest arrivals with a tarpaulin and a rope.

Al Jazeera’s John Psaropoulos reports from Lesbos.