Amnesty International Report 2017/18

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Amnesty International Report 2017/18

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

Conscientious objectors to military service 

continued to be punished for refusing to 

undertake alternative civilian service, which 

remained punitive and discriminatory in 

length. The duration of alternative civilian 

service was 347 days, more than double the 

shortest military service period of 165 days.

FRANCE

French Republic

Head of state: Emmanuel Macron (replaced François 

Hollande in May)

Head of government: Édouard Philippe (replaced 

Bernard Cazeneuve in May)

The state of emergency, introduced in 

2015, was eventually lifted. A new law 

increased the government’s powers to 

impose counter-terrorism measures on 

vague grounds and without full judicial 

scrutiny. Authorities continued to return 

Afghan nationals to Afghanistan in violation 

of the principle of non-refoulement. A new 

vigilance law imposing obligations on large 

companies entered into force.

COUNTER-TERROR AND SECURITY

In July, Parliament approved the 

government’s proposal to extend the state of 

emergency until 1 November and then to end 

it. It had been in force since the attacks 

carried out in the capital, Paris, on 13 

November 2015.

In October, Parliament adopted a 

governmental bill to introduce new counter-

terrorism measures into ordinary law. The law 

increased the powers of the Minister of the 

Interior and the prefects to impose 

administrative measures on individuals, in 

cases where there was not sufficient 

evidence to open a criminal investigation. 

The measures included restrictions on 

freedom of movement, house searches, 

closure of places of worship, and the 

establishment of security zones where law 

enforcement officials were permitted to 

exercise enhanced stop-and-search powers. 

The law required prefects to seek a judicial 

authorization only in respect of searches.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the 

promotion and protection of human rights 

and fundamental freedoms while countering 

terrorism had in September expressed 

concern that the bill included a vague 

definition of what constituted a threat to 

national security and had the effect of 

transposing emergency measures into 

ordinary law.

FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY

Prefects continued to resort to emergency 

measures to restrict the right to freedom of 

peaceful assembly. In particular, they 

adopted dozens of measures restricting the 

freedom of movement of individuals to 

prevent them from attending public 

assemblies. Authorities imposed these 

measures on vague grounds and against 

individuals with no apparent connection with 

any terrorism-related offence. Prefects 

imposed 17 measures to prevent individuals 

from participating in the public assemblies 

calling for police accountability after a young 

man reported he had been raped by a police 

officer on 2 February. The Paris Prefect of 

Police imposed 10 measures to prevent 

protesters from attending the public 

assembly scheduled for International 

Workers’ Day on 1 May.

On 5 January, a police officer was indicted 

for firing a sting-ball grenade that blinded 

protester Laurent Théron in one eye. The trial 

of the police officer was ongoing at the end of 

the year. The investigation into the alleged 

excessive use of force by police against 

dozens of protesters who had attended the 

public assemblies organized in 2016 against 

the reform of labour laws was still ongoing at 

the end of the year.

In March, a new law on the use of force and 

weapons by law enforcement officials entered 

into force. The law permitted the use of some 

weapons, including kinetic impact projectiles, 

in instances that did not fully comply with 

international standards.

In June, the Constitutional Court ruled that 

the emergency measure that had allowed 

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Amnesty International Report 2017/18

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prefects to restrict freedom of movement was 

unconstitutional. However, in July Parliament 

included the same measure in the law that 

extended the state of emergency. Prefects 

imposed 37 such measures between 16 July 

and 30 October.

REFUGEES’ AND MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS

Between January and July, the prefectural 

authorities of Alpes-Maritimes department 

stopped 28,000 refugees and migrants who 

had crossed the border from Italy. The 

authorities sent 95% of them back to Italy, 

including unaccompanied minors, without 

providing them with the right to seek asylum 

in France.

Between January and August, authorities 

placed more than 1,600 Afghan nationals in 

detention centres in view of returning them to 

other European countries under the Dublin III 

Regulation – a mechanism for allocating 

responsibility for the examination of asylum 

claims among EU member states − or to 

Afghanistan. In the same period, according to 

civil society organizations, authorities 

returned about 300 Afghan nationals to other 

EU countries and expelled at least 10 of them 

to Afghanistan. Authorities returned 640 

individuals to Afghanistan in 2016. All returns 

to Afghanistan constituted a violation of the 

principle of non-refoulement − the principle 

according to which states are obliged not to 

return any person to a country where they 

would risk human rights violations − given 

the volatile security and human rights 

situation in Afghanistan.

In the aftermath of the eviction of the 

informal settlement near Calais, known as 

“The Jungle”, in November 2016, authorities 

put in place punitive measures against the 

hundreds of migrants and refugees who had 

subsequently returned to Calais. They 

enhanced police stop-and-search operations, 

which raised concerns over ethnic profiling. 

In March, municipal authorities prohibited 

humanitarian organizations from distributing 

meals to migrants and asylum-seekers in the 

town. At the end of March, a court ruled that 

the decision constituted an inhumane and 

degrading treatment and suspended it. 

Municipal authorities refused to fully comply 

with the ruling and only allowed the 

distribution of one meal a day. In June, the 

Public Defender of Rights (Ombudsperson) 

expressed concerns about the human rights 

violations experienced by migrants and 

asylum-seekers in Calais and called on 

authorities to ensure the respect of their 

social and economic rights, in particular 

access to water and to adequate housing, 

and to provide them with effective 

opportunities to seek asylum in France.

Authorities continued to prosecute and 

convict individuals who supported migrants 

and refugees in entering or staying in France 

irregularly, for example by providing food or 

shelter. In August, an appeal court convicted 

Cédric Herrou, a farmer living close to the 

French-Italian border, and sentenced him to 

a suspended sentence of four months’ 

imprisonment for helping migrants and 

refugees to cross the border into France and 

for sheltering them.

DISCRIMINATION

In January, a law extending the moratorium 

on evictions of informal settlements during 

winter entered into force. Authorities 

continued to forcibly evict people from 

informal settlements, many of them Roma 

migrants. Civil society organizations reported 

that authorities had evicted 2,689 individuals 

in the first half of the year.

On 14 March, the Court of Justice of the EU 

failed to uphold Muslim women’s rights to 

non-discrimination by ruling that a private 

French employer had not breached EU anti-

discrimination law in dismissing a woman for 

wearing a headscarf.

CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY

In March, a law imposing a “duty of 

vigilance” on large companies entered into 

force. The law required companies to 

establish and implement a “vigilance plan” to 

prevent serious human rights abuses and 

environmental damage resulting directly or 

indirectly from their own activities and those 

of subsidiaries and other business partners. 

Victims of human rights abuses resulting 

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