HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION FOR VULNERABLE ASYLUM APPLICANTS

VII Introduction To what or to whomare people or things vulnerable?Who can inflict the harms upon somebody and who can protect somebody against them? One is always vulnerable to particular agents with respect to particular sorts of threats. Vulnerability is there- fore an inherently agent-specific notion (Brown, 2012; Goodin, 1985; Peroni & Tim- mer, 2013). Protecting the vulnerable is first of all an issue of social responsibility. By protecting the vulnerable, we protect us all enhancing positive social relationships, increasing social interaction and building amore responsive and coherent society. Al- though humans have“the right to have human rights“ as Hannah Arendt puts it, links between vulnerability and human rights are not always obvious in the Legal Frame- work, and the rights of the more vulnerable are not always sufficiently protected. Starting from2012, hundreds of thousands of displaced people fromAsia and Africa, who fled home due to conflicts, economic devastation, human rights violation and persecution, have been crossing Greece seeking a better future in Europe. Exploited by traffickers and smugglers all over their way, forcedmigrants and refugees head for Western and Northern European countries through theWestern Balkans. Giorgio Ag- amben very aptly uses the term homo sacer to refer to the rights and perception of the refugee in a state of exception, drawing froma Roman law tradition that with this Latin term referred to a personwho is banned andmay be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. Focusing on the Greek context, according to the UNHCR’s report, in 2015 and 2016 over 1.000.000 refugees arrived in Greece. This challenging number created a‘recep- tion crisis’for Greece, that apparently was not ready to receive, accommodate and en- sure a safe, smooth and quality process of integration for refugees or facilitate their relocation in cases that were desired. Especially, in the field of education great chal- lenges arose for teachers and local schools, as well as for local societies. In this context, acknowledging the importance of education in the equation that ac- counts for quality residency, integration or resettlement, the Hellenic Open Univer- sity took the initiative through Professor’s George Androulakis, the former academic vice-president of HOU, strong support to offer a new online, distant learning Post- graduate Program entitled “Language Education for refugees and migrants” (LRM) on September 2016. Until 2020, almost 500 students have enrolled (among them a