There's snow in the hills that ring Serres, a big town in northern Greece.

As night approaches a group of Yazidi refugees – survivors of Islamic State attacks and persecution in Iraq – return to their camp in the town's industrial outskirts with foraged branches. They build a fire, ash fast turning white in the icy rain.

They retreat to their tents with glowing coals, choosing to risk a fire over the certainty of another shivering, sleepless night.

But they don't sleep much, anyway. Every hour or so they go out to try to find another hot coal or two.

In the morning they wake in their muddy field, cold to the bone. Some tents flooded overnight. There is no hot water in the showers. Again. The power that runs the limited lighting is on the blink. Again.

This is an official, government-run refugee camp.

In a European country.

And aid workers say it is far from unusual.

Tens of thousands of refugees who fled conflict in Syria and Iraq face a cold, uncertain winter as the Greek government struggles – and often fails – to cope with their needs.

Workers from several aid organisations told Fairfax Media that refugees across Greece are at risk of dying this Christmas because of the appalling conditions.

Tents can kill through cold or fire. Crowded warehouses pose disease risks. Medical care is insufficient. Violence is an everyday fact. Child exploitation is real. Sanitation is suspect. Lice and infectious diseases are spreading. Food is basic and culturally inappropriate. Children are missing vital years of education.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Save the Children International CEO says simply: "The Greek camps are at breaking point."

The refugee camp in Serres, a big town in northern Greece. Photo: Nick Miller

Another member of a large NGO trying to explain why Greece's refugee program is such a mess says: "We honestly don't know why ... We have been raising these issues all year.

"I just don't believe they put the resources that were really needed behind it, and they didn't move quickly enough."

There is incompetence, a lack of resources and political will. And, this being Greece, there is low-level corruption.

One site that demonstrates many of these problems is the Serres camp.

Fairfax Media was not granted access, but visited the area and corroborated stories about the conditions through multiple sources – and through photos provided by refugees and other visitors.

A group of young Yazidis met with me, away from the camp. Their English was impressive. Their eyes spoke of horrors.

The plight of the Yazidis made international news in August 2014 when IS entered the Sinjar area in northern Iraq. The Yazidis fled to the mountains with barely enough food and water to last them a day or two, while behind them thousands were killed and women sold into slavery.

Western military including Australia dropped supplies to the besieged refugees while Kurdish and US forces cleared an evacuation corridor.

Around 500 have ended up here in Serres.

Mayada, 13, stared into space and picked at her blue nail polish as she told her story.

"ISIS came to my country," she said. "Now we don't have anything."

She spent a week with her family in the mountains without food or water. She saw old people die.

"ISIS say we will come to mountain and they will kill us, they will take us," she said. "They take many women Yazidi. We were very scared."

She fled the mountains with 43 people in one small van, from Iraq to Syria – "no food, no clothes, no house, we don't know where we will go". A year later she went to Turkey, bound for Europe.

"I went three times to the sea," she says. They finally found a way to Greece.

"We want to go to any country in Europe," she says. "We lost our future."

Yazidi refugees at Serres camp in northern Greece (from left): Mayada, 13, Shirin, 16, Zahra, 18, Manisa, 21, and Hashim, 18. Photo: Nick Miller

Hashim, 18, has a similar story. "Before Daesh [Islamic State] entered Sinjar life was simple," he said. "We were happy, very happy … we did not ask anything from anyone."

But then "everything turned head over heels", he said. IS entered their village killing men, abducting women and children "and carried out the ugliest crimes".

The family spent a week in the mountains – "we did not sleep at all. There were people there without food or water and fear filled their hearts. I saw people drink water not suitable for drinking. Every minute I was seeing someone in a tired, hungry or thirsty state, children dying, women raped, men killed ... I saw everything."

Leaving the mountains, he saw a mother abandon her young daughter who couldn't walk any more.

"I carried her with me because I did not have much stuff to carry," he said.

Hashim, Mayada and their friends want a future – to go to school, to have the same chance that others have.

"One month ago they said 'two weeks we will make a place for you at school and you will go'," says Mayada. "But nothing. Liar."

That 'liar' is delivered with a flat, angry tone.

"We come through hell to go to a country to have a life... They need to help us."

Shirin, 16, says they are being neglected in Serres.

"All children they will die in the tents. They are swimming because many rains come. We can't make a fire. We don't have a light to study English. We can't cook. We don't have a stove. We can't shower. We don't have hot water. It is very bad."

And there's the interminable asylum process. Mayada's first interview is scheduled for March.

I ask them how they cope.

"Because we are together," says Mayada.

Save the Children spokeswoman Sacha Myers said children and families in the Serres camp were living in "very basic tents without floors or electricity … children are sleeping in the cold as the tents are not heated".

The camp lacks basic drainage so the tents flood when it rains and there was no way for families to get warm and dry again, she said. The toilet and shower facilities do not have proper drainage, creating a major hygiene risk.

Aid workers say conditions in the refugee camp are far from unusual. Photo: Hashim Kheri Kutu

"The conditions are unacceptable and Save the Children is extremely concerned about the health and safety of the children."

Kristina Hasler, Director of the Yazidi support group Yazda in Greece, said the way the camp has been run was "unacceptable".

Prefabricated cabins delivered to the site months ago sit empty, askew in the muddy field beside the camp.

They can't be inhabited until drains, water and electricity are connected – and while contractors have come and gone, little progress has been made.

Serres businesswoman Chariclia Savva has been working as a volunteer helping the refugees.

She confirmed that conditions at the camp had deteriorated dramatically in the last month.

"Even though most of them were living in tents they were not really complaining until the temperature reached minus five," she said.

Now, "their dream and only concern is to leave Greece".

Fairfax Media emailed camp administrator Chrysa Tapa asking for access to the camp but did not receive a reply.

A week later, after multiple attempts, she referred all our questions to the ministry of the interior. She may have reason to avoid media scrutiny.

In August Greek media reported that Dimitris Tapas, deputy coordinator for refugees in the local Syriza government prefectural committee, had won a €750,000 ($1.075 million) contract for catering at the camp.

He is Chrysa's father.

Syriza's political opponents had a field day but those inside the party were appalled as well.

Syriza MP Afrodite Stabouli is a member of the parliament's standing committee on public administration.

She told Fairfax Media that Ms Tapa "certainly has not been chosen by the process provided by law … Is the creation and management of a 500-person hosting camp the appropriate job for a 25-year-old psychologist with no experience?"

Ms Tapa's father appears to have an undefined role running the camp, Stabouli said – "[he] keeps staying in the camp giving orders to anybody including the NGO members, the volunteers and the police".

Stabouli said conditions at the camp were "elementary", blaming those running the camp, a lack of government surveillance, delays in EU funding, and a lack of coordination among NGOs and the ministry.

A spokesman from the Ministry of Migration Policy said it "does not answer questions involving personal opinions".

While this report was being prepared, one week after Fairfax Media started making inquiries to officials about conditions at the camp, the government began moving the Serres Yazidis to hotels 60 kilometres away.

The ministry spokesman said they had approved the construction of new infrastructure at the camp, and were transporting refugees to hotels "until the reconstructed camp will meet all the proper conditions".

But even this is apparently being badly handled – Fairfax was told it meant cancelling an educational program in city schools for the children, and the refugees arriving at the hotels were left without any food, or means to obtain it.

Child refugees at the camps are missing years of education. Photo: Hashim Kheri Kutu

Despite all this, the Yazidis in Serres have done better than some. As a homogenous community, with strong leadership, they are spared the violence and criminality endemic in other camps.

There are around 62,000 refugees and migrants in Greece. Sacha Myers, spokeswoman for Save the Children in Greece, said her group was very concerned about every refugee site in the country.

"Many of the sites aren't well prepared for winter and we still have thousands of people living in tents," she said.

"It's absolutely no condition for children and families to be living in – it's a risk to their health particularly as temperatures continue to drop."

The government's effort to put container housing units on every site was happening too slowly, she said. The islands are particularly crowded and almost exclusively tents – some camps are at three times their capacity.

In late November a six-year-old child and a woman died in a fire at the Moria detention centre in Lesbos, which started when people were cooking inside their tent.

Myers said tensions were rising in the camps – they live in constant fear of deportation and they are losing hope. There is a huge backlog of applications and appeals. The system is overwhelmed. Many won't even get an interview until Spring 2017.

"We have spoken to a lot of families over the last few months and they just look absolutely broken," Myers said. "This fear and uncertainty is creating a really toxic environment in the camps."

And while the army's food supplies are adequate, they're not suitable for babies or breastfeeding mothers. The government is starting to install kitchens on all the sites – but, again, it's slow to roll out.

STC says refugees simply need to be moved to hotels or apartments in urban areas – but again it's not happening quickly enough.

On the plus side, Myers said, many refugee children were being integrated into schools across Greece, in a government program that has taken off in recent months.

Claire Whelan, advocacy advisor for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Greece, confirms they share STC's worries.

"There are thousands of refugees and migrants that live in tents and warehouses and army barracks and their conditions don't necessarily meet humanitarian standards," she said. "There's no heating; in a lot of these sites there are very big challenges with electrical systems.

"We are all quite concerned. You have newborns, older people, disabled people. Living in these types of conditions will not be good for their health."

Security at the camps, for both refugees and workers is also a problem – "there's not really any rule of law", Whelan said. There is sexual and domestic violence.

There is a "massive lack of trust and hope now," she said. "People feel like they're imprisoned in Greece ... You can see they are getting more depressed. People have said to me directly, in front of their children 'I might as well die, there's no point any more'."

Asylum seekers are still arriving – almost 2000 just in November.

Anita Dullard, emergency communications delegate for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, says their top priority right now is keeping people warm.

"[Providing acceptable facilities] just hasn't moved fast enough. There's really no other way I can describe it.

"There's really young children and elderly people in the camps, newborn babies who have not much protecting them from the snow and the cold other than a canvas tent."

A child plays in the sodden Serres refugee camp in northern Greece. Photo: Hashim Kheri Kutu

Dullard say Greece is still in an "emergency phase" – and needs to acknowledge that it has a long-term situation that requires solutions like cash handouts, community accommodation, or at least communal kitchens where refugees can make nutritious, home-cooked food.

Communications consultant Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown has worked with a former International Criminal Court prosecutor researching the Yazidis' plight and has visited Yazidi refugee camps in both Iraq and Greece.

"Our visit to the Greek camps in August 2016 was more disturbing," she said. "Yazidis were forced into a diaspora with no homeland to return to and at risk of losing their identity. There is no future for them in Greece.

"They need to be able to return to Iraq and the international community needs to provide the adequate funding and security to enable them to do so. Otherwise, ISIS will have accomplished genocide."