Rights groups urge UN body to help stop racial profiling by French police

Complaint follows a lack of govt action despite last year’s report that incidents of discrimination were not ‘isolated’

A complaint has been filed to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination over racial profiling by police in France.

Five French and international groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have brought the complaint following a lack of government action despite a French Council of State finding in October last year that incidents of discrimination were not “isolated.”

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which France is a party, forbids racial profiling by law enforcement.

The five complainants are asking for the UN committee’s recognition of the issue in France and a plan for the government to eradicate it.

The proposed steps include “redefining and clarifying the legal framework for police identity checks to eliminate discrimination by requiring objective and individualized grounds for all checks,” creating “traceability for all such stops and identity checks by the police by creating a system for recording and evaluating the justification for each identity check,” and “strengthening victims’ rights by providing a system for effective recourse to an independent complaints mechanism.”

The complainants are also seeking to change “the institutional objectives, guidelines, and training for the police, including with respect to interactions with the public.”

They have been pursuing legal action on the issue since a 2016 ruling by the French Court of Cassation condemning five cases of racial profiling as “gross misconduct that engages the responsibility of the state.”

Extensive research, including testimony from police officers, has found that racial profiling —

especially of young, male Black and Arab people — is widespread across numerous French police forces.

Racial profiling in France has been acknowledged by a host of domestic and international bodies, including the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance.