Minors are Pushed Back at the Franco-Italian Border

Since February, Sciences Po Refugee Help (SPRH) has been conducting weekly permanences at the Franco-Italian border to document the pushback of people on the move. At the permanences, SPRH volunteers wait outside the Italian border police station to receive migrants turned away from France. In total, the student association is stationed at the border for 11.5 hours each Sunday. Volunteers bring tea and coffee, notify individuals that no buses run on Sundays and guide them toward Ventimiglia. The aim is to create a sense of accountability among authorities, as the presence of volunteers reminds police that their actions are under observation. SPRH ensures that the Red Cross is called when young children are released, and volunteers can contact other regional solidarity actors to connect people on the move with local services. SPRH members offer what limited information they can, explaining in simple terms why a person has been rejected and where to go in Ventimiglia for food, legal support or a place to charge their phone. Ultimately, the extent of the support that can be provided is limited, and volunteers frequently encounter victims of unclear legal processes for whom no solution can be offered. In many cases, all volunteers can do is provide conversation, recognition and kindness.

In 105 hours of observation, SPRH has encountered over 600 men, women and children at the Franco-Italian frontier. This suggests that about seven people are forced back from the border per hour. Of those pushed back, close to a fifth have been women, while close to 11 percent were accompanied minors, many of whom were under 12. About two percent were identified as unaccompanied minors.

January 22 2023

Volunteers encounter a group of 16 year olds upon their rejection from France

The first boy holds up his rejection paper, his age has been falsified: “My birthdate is the 23 of April 2007. They put the 23 of April 2004….With all this suffering, I ask myself why the French behave in this way, why are they cruel to us? We are minors.” 

After beginning this project, volunteers quickly noticed a perpetual violation of international law at the border via the pushback of unaccompanied minors. This observation has been corroborated by a number of humanitarian groups working along the Franco-Italian border. 

The right to asylum for minors is established by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states in Article 22, “State Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that a child who is seeking refugee status… Receive appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance.” Equally, French law recognizes the right of minors to claim asylum as, in 2018, the Nice Administrative Court ruled that it is illegal to send minors who enter French territory back to Italy. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles maintains that asylum-seeking children must be considered as children before they are considered asylum seekers. This means they ought to be awarded all the rights guaranteed to children in the United Nations Charter of the Rights of the Child.  The Nice court, however, found the French authorities guilty of “a serious violation of the higher interests of the minors.”

Despite the numerous denunciations of the pushback of minors from both local and international humanitarian organizations, French police have continued the practice. SPRH has gathered dozens of accounts of police forging signatures and incorrectly documenting dates of birth to justify the expulsion of children from French territory. Albeit true that many minors are first incorrectly registered as major when they arrive in Italy and thus appear as such in the system on the Italian side of the border, French police remain accountable for the forgery of signatures and dates of birth. Moreover, in cases where individuals can present documents that prove their status as minors, it should not be at the discretion of border police to determine whether these documents are sufficient proof of minor status. Ultimately, French police have no actual legal authority to determine who is a minor; however, gaps in the vague border protocol have resulted in police exercising this authority. 

March 26 2023:

Testimony from an SPRH volunteer

“We encountered a group of minors with documents proving their age. What’s more, they claim to have been registered as minors in Italy. They say they escaped from a camp for minors in Lampedusa as the conditions were unbearable. Given this, we approach the Italian police and ask why the boys are being rejected. They tell us the machine to check the registry for the boys' age is broken and that they should come back the next day. It is shocking that a faulty machine is sufficient  justification for the arbitrary expulsion of unaccompanied minors.” 

The Border Report

The perpetuation of this illegal practice has sparked the interest of the SPRH research pole, who have decided to investigate this border in more depth. Students have engaged in broader research on the violations of international law by authorities in this region. This includes the suspension of human rights in the informal detention center at the Franco-Italian border in Menton, as well as the lack of sufficient basic health services, the consequences of the militarisation of the border and the practice of racialized controls. The research, which has been conducted over the course of the last 6 months and on par with the border permanences, is being compiled in a report which will be published on June 1st, 2023. The project is called “Stories in Motion” and a website, which we invite you to visit at https://storiesinmotion.glitch.me is already up and running. 

Follow @st0riesinm0ti0n on instagram for more testimony from the people working in, living on and crossing the Franco-Italian border.