France must act on the “dire” living conditions of refugees and migrants sleeping rough in Calais and stop systematically evicting people from tents in violation of the right to adequate housing, the United Nation’s housing envoy has said, reports The Guardian.
Leilani Farha, the UN’s special rapporteur for housing, highlighted the “harsh conditions” of an estimated 600-700 refugees and migrants homeless and sheltering in tents or makeshift camps on the northern French coast with “extremely limited access to emergency shelter”. Many have come to northern France because they hope to reach Britain.
Since the closure of a vast makeshift migrant camp in Calais in October 2016, hundreds of people are still sleeping rough along the coast in squalid conditions, many without proper access to sanitation.
Human rights groups in France say police in Calais repeatedly and forcibly evict people who are sleeping outside in wooded areas or by the sides of roads, often arriving in the early morning and confiscating their tents and sleeping bags, leaving them without any shelter.
Farha, who has analysed housing conditions across France, said: “The government of France must prohibit the repeated and systematic evictions of persons living in tents and informal settlements resulting in inhuman or degrading treatment.”
She told the Guardian: “People in Calais are being compelled to live in really dire circumstances, having already endured harrowing journeys there involving violence and extreme conditions … The evictions every 48 hours, which is what’s happening to those tent-dwellers, is unequivocally a violation of the right to adequate housing.”