Calais Update —French Government to Begin Food Distribution for Refugees
In the past week, temperatures dropped dramatically in Calais, reaching as low as -6 degrees Celsius. Local authorities temporarily re-opened the emergency accommodation centres, providing up to 285 places per night for the vulnerable individuals sleeping rough in Calais. However, this provision fell far short of providing for the 600-700 displaced people we estimate are currently living precariously around the city. Volunteers at our warehouse were working around the clock to ensure that as many people as possible could access these shelters whilst providing hot tea, firewood and hypothermia checks, plus our regular services to those who had to sleep outside.
The Prefécture has closed these centres now that temperatures have risen slightly, despite night times still being as cold as 2 degrees Celsius, and it is unclear if they will be reopened. What is clear however, is that from the end of March, these centres will remain permanently closed and empty, reestablishing the state’s position of meeting their minimum obligations under French law.
During his official visit to Calais in January, President Emmanuel Macron made the unexpected announcement that the French state would be starting its own food distributions for displaced people in Calais. News reports at the time stated that this came as a shock to the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Prefécture, who had not been planning to take on this responsibility. The French association, La Vie Active, has now been contracted by the government to begin the service tomorrow (Tuesday 6th March) and will be providing meals twice a day, in the morning and afternoon.
La Vie Active has been providing water and sanitation to refugees in Calais since the summer of 2017, following a court ruling upheld by the Conseil d’État that the local authority must provide basic sanitation to refugees in Calais. The provision of food by the state is a welcome development by our partner associations and volunteers, who have consistently advocated that the state should take responsibility for the hundreds of displaced people in the city. Refugee Community Kitchen will suspend its food distributions in Calais for the first time since its foundation in the autumn of 2015, but will continue to support refugees in Dunkirk. Nonetheless, questions remain as to how the distribution will be received by the refugees themselves.
The daily distributions will be provided at two new locations determined by the local authorities, in the presence of police, and will account for 350 people. Our associations estimate that there are currently between 600 and 700 displaced people in Calais who we visit at 5 different locations every week. The Refugee Info Bus, alongside our partners, L’Auberge des Migrants, Help Refugees, Utopia56, Refugee Youth Service, the School Bus Project and the Refugee Women’s Centre will endeavour to continue our services.
On the 21st February 2018, a draft asylum and immigration bill was presented to the Council of Ministers, proposing reform to current asylum procedures in France. Some of the proposals are centred on reducing the overall time that an asylum application can take to be processed, from 11 months to 6 months. It would also mean that if an individual’s asylum claim was rejected, they would only have 15 days to appeal the decision, instead of the current 30 days. The bill would also double the maximum period of time an asylum seeker may be detained, from 45 days to 90 days. If you’d like to read more about the changes currently underway in French immigration law, please visit the statement published here and signed by Refugee Info Bus.
All of these updates indicate that we are at the outset of a period of intense upheaval for the communities we support in Calais, and more generally for displaced people across the French territory.
We cannot say for certain at this stage how these changes will impact refugees or the work that we carry out.
We can, however, guarantee our continued support for those individuals who will bear the weight of these changes — both in Calais and further afield.
Further Reading:
The French Asylum Bill: a deeply unbalanced proposal
By Hélène Soupios-David, Head of European Affairs and Studies, France Terre d’Asile
New French Immigration Bill Provokes Backlash
By Lisa Louis for Deutsche Welle
