Denial of basic rights: the marginalisation of Romani refugees in France

03 April 1999

Alison Pickup

Between January 20 and 31, 1999, I visited the Paris region. One of my aims was to document the conditions and environment in which Romani asylum seekers from Central and Eastern European countries are living. To this end I visited a group of Roma from Romania living in St. Ouen, a northern Parisian suburb, with the Ecole du Voyage - a charity-run travelling school - and held meetings with two local non-governmental organisations, the Association pour l'accueil des Voyageurs (AŠAV) and Médecins du Monde. The extreme poverty in which Romani asylum seekers are forced to live and their almost total exclusion from "normal" life in France highlights the failings of the French asylum system.

Under French asylum law, an application for asylum must be made, within one month of arrival, to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA). Asylum seekers are entitled to social security benefit and are issued with temporary residence permits for periods of three months at a time whilst their cases are being determined. OFPRA generally issues its decision within two to three months of receiving the application. If the decision is negative, the asylum seeker is entitled to appeal to the Committee for Refugee Appeals (CRR); however, he or she is no longer entitled to any benefits. After rejection by CRR, the asylum seeker is issued with an order to leave the country (Invitation à quitter le territoire français). They are at this stage entitled to appeal to France's highest administrative court, the Conseil d'Etat, but the fact that such an appeal has been lodged does not offer legal protection from deportation¹.

The people I spoke with at AŠAV claimed not to have met a single Romani asylum seeker who had been granted asylum at either stage of the process in the last five years. Moreover, they claimed to have seen "form letters" of rejection from OFPRA, identical letters for several claimants citing the same reasons for refusal with only a few personal details changed. If this claim is true, it would suggest that OFPRA may not be considering each claim individually, but may instead be summarily dismissing applications from Roma.

Many Roma remain in France even after they have received orders to leave the country. I visited the sites of two camps where Roma were living. The first had recently been deserted. The fear of deportation causes Roma in such camps to move on often. Sometimes they just move about within France. At other times they leave to try their luck in other countries.

The majority of Romani asylum seekers in France come from Romania. France now considers Romania to be a "safe country" and this not only limits the chances of success for new asylum applications, but has reportedly led to instances in which individuals already granted refugee status have been issued with deportation orders on the expiry of their residence permit. I heard of one Rom who had come to France in the early eighties and been granted political asylum. He was given a residence permit for ten years. When he applied for its renewal he was refused and issued an order to leave the country. He successfully appealed the decision. However, he was still left without any official status, although no longer threatened with deportation. His lawyer apparently lost interest at this point and did not take the process any further. It is now six years since his residence permit came up for renewal. The man has since lost his job and his flat, and has been repeatedly arrested by the police for not having any documentation showing a legal status in the country. If his residence permit had been renewed he would now have been eligible for naturalisation.

"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care, and necessary social services..."²

Once an initial negative decision has been issued by OFPRA, the asylum seeker loses all rights to any kind of social support or state-financed housing in France. The Roma who lived on the site which I visited in the settlement in the Paris suburb of St. Ouen, northern Paris, lived in degrading conditions. They lived in caravans on an unused piece of land near an industrial estate. There were about thirty to forty caravans on the site, organised into family groups. There was no evidence of any kind of waste disposal, fresh water or proper sanitation. The Roma who live here are forced to rely on begging and work on the black market to support themselves. They run the permanent risk of deportation if they are asked for identification by police officers.

These Roma, like the majority of Romani asylum seekers now living in France, have had their asylum claims turned down by the authorities and therefore they do not have any official papers. Without a state social security card, their access to medical care is severely limited. They live in crowded conditions without proper facilities. Needless to say, the state of their health is generally fairly poor.

Those who are lucky enough to be in contact with the non-governmental organisation Doctors of the World (Médecins du Monde) and other similar organisations can have access to rudimentary medical care. This is achieved through the combination of relationships built between the NGOs and certain local hospitals, which will then agree to treat the asylum seekers, and the regular medical consultations which Médecins du Monde provide on site. Médecins du Monde are also able to provide asylum seekers with a certificate known as an "Aide médicale d'état" which allows them access to state-provided medical care. While the value of the service provided by such organisations cannot be doubted, such rudimentary provisions cannot be a substitute for comprehensive health care programmes made available to all.

"Everyone has the right to education"³

Many of the children have previously attended school in Romania, and a much higher proportion of the parents are literate than among French Roma. According to AŠAV, access to education in France should not be constrained by the fact that a child is present illegally, or in an irregular situation. Nonetheless, a very small number of children of Romani asylum seekers are able to attend school. Most often French schools simply claim to have no room for Romani children. On the rare occasions that they are able to be enrolled in schools, children often have to travel long distances each morning.

An example of this was provided in a report by AŠAV. There is a camp of Romanian Roma near the municipality of Puiseux Pontoise, where there are sixteen caravans and nine children of school age. Only two of these children are currently attending school. They were able to enroll only because their father previously held a residence permit, although he is currently struggling with the authorities to have it renewed. These children attend school in St. Ouen, which requires a daily journey by train, bus and on foot, accompanied by their mother. The parents of the remaining seven school-aged children in the camp as well as the children themselves express the wish to attend school.

A major obstacle to school attendance is the fact that Romani families without the appropriate documentation may be forced to move on frequently because of fear of deportation. This means that even when their children are able to attend school, they cannot pursue their studies in one place for long enough to gain any real benefit.

Often, the only education to which children of Romani refugees have access is that provided by the charity sector, specifically the Ecole du Voyage. This school-in-a-van visits sites where Romani children are living once a week for an hour and a half. At each session they are only able to accommodate around ten children, due to space restrictions. The children are taught to read and write basic French, and a record is kept of their progress.

"The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State"⁴

Many asylum seekers make a single application per family. The head of the family makes the application with their spouse and children listed as their dependants. The decision made on the principal applicant's case is thereby applicable to the whole family.

Alarmingly, I heard reports of cases where the principal applicant in a family group was deported, leaving his or her children alone. I was told of three cases where this had happened. In one case, a family of four children were left in the care of their elder sister after their parents were deported. In another case, parents were deported, leaving their two children in the care of their grandmother. Finally, a mother was deported, leaving her baby in the care of its father, who was not able to look after it.

Articles in the press have claimed that Romani children are sent alone by their parents to France to beg. People I spoke to thought that it was more likely that these were children whose parents had been deported, leaving them to fend for themselves.

Conclusions: "recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world"⁵

In France, Romani asylum seekers, who are currently mainly from Romania, face little chance of success in the asylum process. Their applications are subjected to an accelerated process because Romania is considered to be a "safe country", and are usually summarily rejected. The single opportunity for appeal provided for by French asylum law is equally fruitless.

Romani asylum seekers are rejected from the asylum process and unable to access basic levels of support. On the other hand, they are understandably reluctant to return to the countries from which they have fled. They are therefore pushed to the margins of society.

The standards of living into which they are thus forced, the denial of their basic rights such as education and access to medical facilities, and of the fundamental importance of the family unit, and the summary rejection by the authorities of their claims to persecution strip Romani asylum seekers of the inherent dignity which is their birthright.

Endnotes:

1. Information from United States Committee for Refugees (USCR) Country Report: France (1997) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) information on France (1997).
2. Article 26, para. 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
3. Article 25, para. 1, ibid.
4. Article 16, para. 3, ibid.
5. Preamble, ibid.