On April 11, 2024, five French and international NGOs (Community House for Solidarity Development (Maison Communautaire pour un Dévelopement Solidaire, MCDS), Pazapas, Equality, Anti-discrimination, Interdisciplinary Justice Network (Réseau Egalité, Antidiscrimination, Justice Interdisciplinaire, Reaji), Amnesty International France and Human Rights Watch) filed a complaint before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) requesting the Committee to find France in violation of its obligations not to discriminate, to prevent discrimination and to protect victims of discrimination. The complaint appeals a decision by France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, that recognized the State’s responsibility for ongoing discriminatory identity checks, but refused to make use of its powers to order the authorities to put in place measures to end the problem.
The complaint highlights the continued denial and minimisation of the problem by the French authorities, their efforts to conceal its scope through an absence of official data and the failure to put in place concrete, relevant and effective measures to put a stop to this widespread, persistent and entrenched problem of discriminatory identity checks.
The organizations emphasize that a systemic problem requires a systemic solution that addresses the different underlying causes including laws, policies, institutional practices and culture. They note that in France, at a minimum, this will require:
- Modifying article 78-2 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure so that objective and individualized grounds are required to carry out identity checks. The current text is overbroad and vague allowing police considerable discretion to check individuals based on subjective criteria paving the way for arbitrary and discriminatory checks;
- Adopting regulatory guidelines that clearly explains this new legal framework;
- Guaranteeing special protection for minors;
- Identifying and modifying organizational policies that drive discriminatory checks, such as quantitative performance targets;
- Providing individuals checked with a record of the stop, including information about the time, date and place of the stop, the legal grounds, reasons, and outcomes, and collecting and publicizing this information on an anonymous basis to allow for supervision and analysis of the manner these powers are used by police;
- Introducing independent oversight of police checks.
(RE)Claim is honoured to have drafted the complaint and to represent MCDS, Pazapas and REAJI before the Committee.
