The mayors of 13 major French cities, frustrated over a lack of shelter for asylum seekers, have penned an open letter to the government demanding it do more to address the situation.
The signatories of the appeal come from an array of political parties, and include Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
“As the mayors of major cities, we are confronted by the growing strain on the system put into place to deal with people seeking refuge on our soil, as well as a humanitarian situation that has not stopped getting worse,” the mayors wrote in the letter, which was dated Tuesday, April 23, but made public the next day. “Hundreds of men, women and children are living in dire conditions in the heart of our cities because of the solutions that have been adopted.”
Since the peak of the European migrant crisis four years ago, France has struggled to deal with an increasing number of people crossing its borders. Makeshift encampments have sprung up in major cities across the country. These are frequently dismantled by police, only to reappear in the same spot weeks later.
In 2018, the number of people who requested asylum in France grew by 22 percent to 122,743, according to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Displaced Persons (Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides or OFPRA). But government reception centres only had room for 86,510.
The Federation of Actors for Solidarity – which regroups 870 different aid organisations – calculates that only one in two asylum seekers have access to government shelters.
“That doesn’t mean that the other half are in the streets. Some are housed by family members or by the community, some live in homeless shelters and others live in makeshift encampments,” Florent Gueguen, director of the Federation of Actors for Solidarity, told FRANCE 24. “We are asking for 40,000 additional beds over the next four years to meet the demand.”
The problem is particularly apparent in the French capital, where Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontiers or MSF) estimates there are now between 1,300 and 1,400 refugees living in tent cities.
“The situation in Paris has been more or less the same for the last two to three years,” Corrine Torre, head of MSF’s Mission France, told FRANCE 24. “This is because (France) has an anti-shelter policy for asylum seekers.”