En 2021, France was doomed by the European Court of Human Rights for having locked up a mother and her four-month-old baby for eleven days in the Mesnil-Amelot detention center and for having inflicted on them inhuman and degrading treatment. On May 25, 2022, the government asked the Council of Europe to close the follow-up to this case, considering that no general measure was required, thus refusing to modify the law.
At the same time, 25 children were locked up in the Roissy waiting area, 6 others in Mesnil-Amelot. Most were under 13 years old. Since 2012 and the first of the 9 condemnations of France by the European Court of Human Rights for the confinement of children in detention centers, at least 33,786 children were placed in detention (including more than 1,460 in metropolitan France and the vast majority in Mayotte), to which must be added the hundreds of children held at the borders and the dozens of unaccompanied minors placed in detention before a final decision on their minority in violation of the law .
All are locked up for simple administrative reasons, in violation of international law and the principle of the best interests of the child. Worse still, this practice continued during the pandemic, even though several epidemic outbreaks were declared in places of confinement, where promiscuity promotes the spread of the virus.
The dramatic impacts
The increased exposure of children to contamination was then added with dramatic consequences the only confinement on their health: withdrawal, refusal to eat, insomnia, stress and symptoms of post-traumatic stress. On a daily basis, in administrative detention centres, children may be confronted with traumatic events (self-mutilation, suicide, suicide attempts, forced removals), and evolve in a violent environment, deprivation of liberty materialized by a constant police presence, regular calls to loudspeakers, fences, barbed wire and the sound of bolts.
France is responsible for these evils and their long-term consequences. It is no longer acceptable to continue to subject children to these unbearable detention conditions. In May 2020, MP Florent Boudié (LRM), supported by the entire parliamentary group of the presidential majority, filed a bill aimed at strictly regulating the administrative detention of families with minors.
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