Pressure on the government to take in the 27 migrants trapped in the buffer zone for close to a week is being stepped up by Unficyp and the UNHCR. On Wednesday, with inland temperatures hitting 42 degrees, Unficyp spokesman Aleem Siddique, said “we are concerned for the health and welfare of the asylum seekers that include many women and children.” He added that they “are facing increasingly difficult conditions”.

Meanwhile, the UNHCR warned that the migrants were living in tents and exposed to extreme weather without access to decent living conditions. It was cooperating with Unficyp, which has control of the buffer zone, to provide them with humanitarian assistance, while it has been pressuring the government to allow them access to asylum applications.

Sources from the agencies claim the stance of the Cyprus government violated national, international and EU law. The government, so far, has ignored this pressure, citing the Green Line regulation, which stipulates that any third country national wishing to enter the Republic required a visa and necessary documentation and claiming many of the migrants did not have these.

It is a tougher response than previously but also disingenuous, as asylum procedures operate under a different legal framework, and everybody knows that thousands of asylum seekers have already arrived in Cyprus without a visa – some do not even have a passport. Nevertheless, the government’s refusal to accept the migrants now stranded in the buffer zone is understandable, even though hundreds of them have streamed across via this route in the past.

Taking in the migrants would be a signal to traffickers to use the buffer zone to get migrants into the Republic. Once the 27 are allowed to file asylum applications, next week, there could be 100 of them stranded in the buffer zone facing increasingly difficult conditions and seeking asylum as there was previously.

If Unficyp forced the migrants back to the ‘TRNC’ from where they entered the buffer zone, there would be no issue. It is not the Republic’s fault that the north does not have asylum procedures in place. The irregular migrants, who are reportedly from Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran and Cameroon, ended up in the buffer zone by flying or taking a boat to the north from Turkey. Why had they not sought asylum in Turkey, which is also bound by international law, if they were so desperate for international protection, and made their way to Cyprus instead?

The government is right in refusing to play ball, even if reference to Green Line regulation is not very convincing. It would repeat the line of the interior ministry, which said that the Republic had no authority over the buffer zone. The migrants are now the problem of Unficyp, which could very easily lead them back to where they had entered the buffer zone and let the authorities there deal with them.