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Rabat – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned France for detaining a young Malian woman and her four-month-old daughter for eleven days, this Thursday.
The ECHR stated that the prolonged detention was “excessive,” adding it violated Articles 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment), 5.1 (right to liberty and security), and 5.4 (right to a prompt decision on the lawfulness of detention) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Taking into account the child’s very young age, the conditions of the detention center and the duration of the detention, France subjected the four month old child and its mother to treatment that exceeded the threshold of severity required by Article 3 of the Convention,” said the judicial arm of the Council of Europe.
The French court did not take “sufficiently into account” the child’s status as a minor before “ordering the extension of the detention”, the ECHR criticizes.
The ECHR further recalls that French law provides that the detention of a minor “can only be decided as a last resort and for the shortest possible time.”
France was ordered to pay a total of €16,780 (MAD 176.797) to the mother and her daughter as compensation.
The Malian asylum seeker arrived in France on January 15, 2018 via Italy, fleeing her country due to threats and risks of “genital mutilation” and forced marriage. She gave birth to her daughter in July of that year while on French soil.
At the end of November 2018, the Malian plaintiff and her child were at risk of facing deportation to Italy, to undergo an examination of her asylum application.
French authorities placed her and her child in the Mesnil-Amelot administrative detention center (Seine-et-Marne) for 48 hours, with the head of the Loir-et-Cher police department citing “a non-negligible risk of flight.”
The young Malian woman refused to board a plane to Italy, trying unsuccessfully to appeal the court order, which was later extended to 28-days.
On December 6, she requested provisional measures to the ECHR, which were validated.
The French government put an end to the detention after 11 days. The young mother and her daughter were then taken in by social services and granted temporary residence permits.
France’s right wing politicians often entertain a possible exit from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Bruno Retailleau, the head of the Republicans senators, defended the idea of a French exit from the European judicial body.
Retailleau told media in June that “the ECHR goes too far,” adding that the “rule of International law must not be an obstacle to the first duty of the State to ensure the protection of the French people.”
The debate on whether communal EU law infringes the legal sovereignty of member states is not new. Many French laws are regularly contested in the ECHR, from the burqa ban, to rulings on marital sex, and countless court condemnations on the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.
