By refusing to repatriate women and children of French nationality who are detained in Syrian camps, France is violating the Convention against Torture, judges the United Nations committee responsible for ensuring its application.
Even if the French state “is not at the origin of the violations suffered, he still remains under the obligation” to protect these people “against serious human rights violations by taking all necessary and possible measures”, considers the Committee against Torture in a decision consulted on Saturday January 21 by Agence France-Presse. Do not take “effective measures” to protect them and not repatriate them “would constitute a violation (…) of the agreement ».
The decision is not binding, but France is invited to forward the decisions taken to the committee. “to follow up [à ses] comments » within ninety days.
“The United Nations Committee against Torture confirms it: our country chooses to abandon children and their mothers in war zones, fully aware of the suffering they endure and the violence to which they are exposed”reacts in a press release Marie Dosé, lawyer for families of women and children detained in the camps of North-East Syria. “One hundred and fifty children and their mothers face a fifth winter” in these camps controlled by Kurdish forces, she recalls.
Shared responsibility
The committee had been seized in 2019 by the families of these women and children considering that France, by not repatriating them, was in violation of Articles 2 and 16 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The French State, in its observations sent to the UN committee and cited in the decision rendered on Thursday, notably considered that the convention did not require a country to protect its nationals in a territory which is not under its jurisdiction. In addition, France “has no capacity to carry out repatriations” who do not depend “not only (…) of the will of the government”he says, referring to the responsibility of local authorities and mothers.
France has already been condemned in 2022 by the Committee on the Rights of the Child and then by the European Court of Human Rights for the same reason. After years of treatment on a case-by-case basis, France carried out two repatriations of women and minors, in July and last October.