France must end the widespread racial profiling of people of black and north African heritage who are routinely stopped by police and asked to show their identity papers with no explanation, a lawyer for rights groups has argued at a historic court hearing in Paris.
In the first class action of its kind against the French state, six French and international organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Justice Initiative, want French authorities to be found at fault for failing to prevent the widespread use of ethnic profiling.
They argue that non-white people across France, notably young men perceived to be black or north African, are routinely singled out and stopped in the street, asked for identity papers and frisked without explanation, often several times a day and from as young as 11 years old.
The conseil d’etat, France’s highest administrative court, is being urged to make the state end the practice, which has been condemned for more than a decade by independent bodies from the United Nations to the Council of Europe and France’s rights’ ombudsman.
The legal challenge is also being brought by three French associations: Maison Communautaire pour un Développement Solidaire, Pazapas and Réseau Egalité, Antidiscrimination, Justice Interdisciplinaire (Reaji). It comes three months after France saw widespread protests and unrest over the police shooting of Nahel, a 17-year-old boy of Algerian descent, at a traffic stop outside Paris in June.
During the protests over Nahel’s death, teenagers and young people of black and north African origin said they faced widespread discrimination, saying they were often stopped several times a day by police for identity checks without explanation.
The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, told a parliamentary commission in July: “It’s false to say there is systemic racism in the national police.”
Maïté De Rue, a senior lawyer at Open Society Justice Initiative, said: “The tragic events of this summer showed France and the world once again that something is profoundly broken in French policing.”
She said successive French governments and police had refused to acknowledge that systemic change was needed to stop the deep-rooted discrimination of police identity stops on non-white citizens.
She said it was a problem well documented by independent bodies in France and internationally, “but there is still a denial. French authorities continue to claim that there is no systemic problem in French police, it’s only about a couple of individuals that might behave badly.”
The class action does not seek compensation for individuals. Rather, it wants the state to be forced to put in place measures to stop the practice, such as stricter definitions of the reasons for police identity checks, a system to record the checks, and regulation for when police target children.
“It is a daily problem and it’s massive,” said Issa Coulibaly from the Pazapas association in Belleville, northern Paris. “Almost every French man perceived as black or north African will have experienced it multiple times. I head an association for cultural and sporting events for young people. As soon as we hold any kind of chat or debate, this issue comes up very quickly.
“It’s something that has been denounced for more than 40 years in France, but there has been no progress; in fact, it too often feels like we’re going backwards. The [police] checks can start from 10 or 11 years old, and are focused on young people. After around 25 years old, it slows but doesn’t stop. It has a profound psychological impact.
“When I started campaigning on this issue in 2010, I thought it was an area of discrimination and racism that was relatively easy to resolve: you just needed political will, not even money. It was agents of the state who were doing it, so it would have been enough to change the rules. But here we are, 13 years later, still facing denial from politicians who could fix the issue.”
In June 2021, the Paris court of appeal condemned the French state for “gross negligence” for what it called the discriminatory stop-and-identity-check of three high-school students at a Paris train station in 2017, as they were returning from a class trip. Earlier, in 2016, France’s highest court said the arrest of three men on the basis of physical characteristics linked to their supposed racial origin amounted to serious misconduct.
The UN human rights committee has expressed concern over the persistence of identity checks based on race. In 2017, the French rights ombudsman estimated that men perceived to be black or north African were 20 times more likely than others to be stopped by police for identity checks. Often these checks came with no explanation.
In 2020, Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the issue in an interview with online media outlet Brut. He said: “Today when you have a skin colour which is not white, you are stopped a lot more. You are identified as a problem and that’s intolerable.”
But no changes have been made by the state.
Omer Mas Capitolin, the head of the Belleville grassroots association Maison Communautaire pour un Développement Solidaire, worked with young people for over 20 years. He said he had been stopped by police himself several times, and once handcuffed and almost suffocated.
He said: “We’re facing a government that is in denial … This is about trying to make the state realise there is a problem.
“It’s a daily reality. We hope the state will have to take alternative steps to make this type of discrimination stop, and respect the international conventions it has signed.”
Antoine Lyon-Caen, a lawyer for the associations, said that despite the state being condemned several times in court, no action had been taken by successive governments to change the practice of police identity checks.
He said: “For more than a decade this has been an issue in the public debate; at least two presidents [François Hollande and Macron] took a position on it, yet the situation hasn’t changed.”
