Children exploited by “insufficiently recognized and protected” criminal networks in France

UNICEF and several associations denounce “the double penalty” of thousands of children exploited by criminal networks in France, who are still too often perceived and treated as offenders.

“For them. For example, it is the double penalty”: the thousands of children exploited by criminal networks in France are still too often perceived and treated as offenders and not as victims, deplore UNICEF and associations that urge the state to protect this vulnerable audience.

These children “are only very insufficiently recognized. Nevertheless, protected as victims”, estimates the French antenna of the UN Childhood Agency in a report published on Wednesday on the occasion of the World Day to Combat Human Beings.

They “are too often prosecuted. Therefore, sanctioned criminally for the offenses committed accordingly of their exploitation”, she adds, while “international and European law nevertheless requires to recognize and protect them as victims of trafficking”.

Mostly young boys

According to data from the interdepartmental mission for the protection of women against violence. Nevertheless, the fight against trafficking in human beings (MIPROF), more than two thirds of the persons concerned by criminal exploitation (pimping, drug trafficking, firing flight, burglary, charity scams, fraudulent documents …) in France are under 18 years of age.

Among the minors identified by associations. 92%would be unaccompanied minors (MNA) and are mainly from the African continent (81%) -And more particularly Algeria and Morocco-and Europe (19%), notably Eastern and South Europe (mainly Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina).

The majority of victims would be boys or young men (89%).

“Those who exploit them set up different strategies: addiction. blackmail, threats, psychological pressures, violence”, underlines with AFP Corentin Bailleul, in charge of plea for Unicef France.

“Young people exploited are often recruited under false promises, or forced to act to survive or repay a debt”.

A “little children exploited “insufficiently recognized protected” recognized” exploitation

But on the ground “their exploitation is little recognized. with a few exceptions”, he added, citing the trial called “small thieves of the Trocadéro” of January 2024. Six Algerian nationals. who had initiated into drugs and kept under the influence of isolated adolescents to force them to commit flights to tourists, had been sentenced to sentences going up to six years in prison.

The Paris court had described a “operating mode where minors” were enslaved and “reified”, “reduced to the state of tools”. His decision had been qualified as history. exemplary by the associations which had praised the “consecration of the status of victims” of the minors.

“The look that is on them is not the right one”

For UNICEF. it is time that France “explicitly” inscribes in its penal code “that a person victim of exploitation can be criminally responsible when the offense committed is a consequence of the children exploited “insufficiently recognized protected” trafficking”.

The UN agency also calls on Paris to be specified in its civil code “that any minor exploited. even occasionally, is deemed to be in danger and is the protection of the children’s judge”.

“The look that is on them is not the good. it is necessary to form the police and justice so that their first reflex is to consider them as victims and not as offenders and put an end to this double penalty”, abounds Geneviève Colas, coordinator of the collective together against the trafficking of human beings, which brings together 28 associations engaged on the question.

Especially since the situation is deteriorating. alerts the representative of Secours Catholique – Caritas France: “We had before adolescents, now we have kids from 8 to 10 years old who are victims of milking. We also see that we have more. more minors” victims of “multifaceted” and “and who” are used from one children exploited “insufficiently recognized protected” to the other according to the needs and desires of the exploiters “.