France Roissy, terminal for minors of the world

January 1, 2002

Comment: The French daily ‘Le Monde’ proposes a quite frightening picture of the situation of ‘Foreign Isolated Minors’ (FIM) kept in the reception center for illegal migrants: a small hotel at the end of the French international airport Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. The journalist describes the situation of few minors, some of them presumed “victims of prostitution network” and fall out of the existing child protection system (the number of admission of FIM doubled in one year).

The article is quite comprehensive in explaining how the French authorities are slowly moving from bad practices (e.g. systematic bone age test) to slightly improved measures (a new building will be open only for the minors next year). In 2008, a third of minors have been deported back to the country where the children were travelling from and not necessarily to their country of origin. Today, the director of the border police of the airport confirms the will to send back the minors to their country of origin.

The complex system of referral and its lack of efficiency are well described among the actions of the police, the juvenile justice and the social assistance for children. The reader would understand the difficulties faced by the service providers, up to the social workers of specialised centers, from which 50% of the children disappear soon or later, according to the journalist.

Unfortunately, if the article addresses the inadequacies of the system and presents appalling individual cases, the editorial choice is based on facts and figures, describing how overloaded are the public and private services, without addressing clearly the responsibilities of the State. As already mentioned 10 days ago in a critical analysis of an article from a Hungarian newspaper, we find here a sort of trivialisation of breaches to the UNCRC. Rarely in such article journalists address the obligations of the States to protect equally all minors, foreigners or nationals. Can we see here a spreading trend within the European media? Indifference to the fate of foreign migrants could find one of its roots in such neutral media coverage.

The original article (in French) is available online here