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UN concerned about ‘racism, xenophobia’ in France

The file photo shows a session of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva, Switzerland.

A team of independent United Nations (UN) experts has slammed France for what it calls the country’s failure to curtail the soaring trend of violence, hate and xenophobic speech against foreign communities.

“The committee is concerned by the recrudescence of hate and xenophobic speech in certain political circles and the media which contribute to the trivialization of racism and xenophobia,” said a report by the UN panel on Friday.

The deliberations of the 18-member Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) condemned France for failing to list inciting racial hatred, including racist remarks and commentary on the Internet, as a crime.

The CERD report came after France unveiled a national action plan, allocating USD 108 million, to curb racism in mid-April.

Denouncing the “ghettos” of immigrants in France, which “can lead to racial segregation,” the report also expressed concern over “the fact that these populations continue to encounter discrimination in terms of work, housing, culture, health services and face difficult situations in terms of schooling.”

According to the French Council of the Muslim Faith, France witnessed 222 Islamophobic acts in the first quarter of 2015, showing a drastic surge in comparison with the 37 incidents recorded over the same period last year.

The Roma community in France

The UN report also touched upon the issue of the treatment of the Roma community in France, which is a minority group that comes mainly from Romania and Bulgaria.

A woman from the Roma community works at the entrance of her shack on December 16, 2014, in a camp in Stains, outside Paris, France. (© AFP) 

“Growing stigmatization of the Roma,” and “the increasing hate speech against them, including by elected political representatives,” are among the experts’ concerns, according to the report.

Jacques Toubon, France’s human rights ombudsman, has said that the Roma are among the foreign communities that face discrimination.

While the Roma were generally unable to access the health care system, Roma children were often deprived of even basic education, as local authorities refused to enroll them in schools.

MIS/HSN/HJL


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