Millions of European citizens are denied the social-rights protection offered by the European Social Charter.
It almost went unnoticed, but it caught the sharp eyes of experts, wary politicians and distant Europeans who woke in the night to follow online this month’s High-Level Conference on the European Social Charter—hoping it would positively affect their fate, across oceans and time.
A number of speakers in Vilnius supported the territorial extension of the charter, which as drafted applies (article L) only to the ‘metropolitan territory’ of a state party, unless it has expressly designated other territories to which the scope is extended.
In practice, the states parties with overseas territories—the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom—are reported to have extended the charter’s application, at least partially, to those territories. All that is, bar one—France.
The French exception
France claims to have ratified all provisions of the Council of Europe’s charter system. Yet it has not made the necessary declaration for this core human-rights treaty to apply to the territories it describes as outremer. This effectively deprives nearly three million people across 11 territories and four oceans of the protection of their basic economic and social rights for which the charter provides. (Nor in fact has France ratified the 1988 protocol to the charter, in support of which it had drafted such a declaration.)
As a result, for decades the overseas territories have hardly been covered in France’s periodic reports on economic and social rights to the Council of Europe. And they have never been associated with a collective complaint before the European Committee of Social Rights, which plays a key monitoring role vis-à-vis the charter.
The stakes are high. Inequalities remain glaring between mainland France and its overseas territories, as unveiled in the publications of its own human-rights institutions and the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE). Unemployment is 2.5 to five times as great in the overseas territories. Prices are up to 42 per cent higher, particularly for food products. Severe poverty is five to 15 times as prevalent and much more intense.Housing, healthcare (up to +17 per cent) and communications (up to +35 per cent) are also way more expensive.
Education and infrastructure are meanwhile often failing. The pandemic and the underlying economic crisis deepened already significant structural deficits in these locations, disproportionately affected also by climate change and other environmental impacts.
‘Second-class citizens’
France’s overseas territories are often unseen and unheard—out of sight, out of mind. Yet an appeal launched days before the conference by my own organisation, rapidly supported by more than 500 leading local, national and international organisations and experts, found a resonance in Vilnius. The president and vice-president of the Council of Europe’s Conference of INGOs, Gerhard Ermischer and Piotr Sadowki respectively, affirmed that there should be no territorial exclusion from the European Social Charter. And the president of the European Committee of Social Rights, Aoife Nolan, echoed their concern that there should be no ‘second-class citizens’.
With the spotlight at the time on a feared victory for the far-right Rassemblement National in the legislative elections, France called on the other European states represented to make additional commitments to social rights under the charter. Yet, though long alerted to its own shortcoming, it failed to seize the opportunity of this event to extend the scope of the charter to those excluded among its own population.
This exclusion is contrary to France’s constitution, legislation and commitments under European and international human-rights instruments. These enshrine the principles of the indivisibility of human rights and of non-discrimination.
Collective complaint
In March, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) filed a collective complaint against France, initiated and developed by Kimbé Rèd FWI and channelled through the domestic Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (League of Human Rights), before the European Committee of Social Rights. It pertains to access to safe drinking water in Guadeloupe and poisoning by chlordecone (a highly toxic pesticide) in Guadeloupe and Martinique.
In May, France objected that the collective complaint should not be deemed admissible. This for the simple reason that it had never made the necessary declaration to extend the scope of the charter to its overseas territories.
France is thus drawing on a mere technical defence to dismiss a human-rights concern. By continuing to deny the protection of a fundamental human-rights and labour-law text to people marked by centuries of economic exploitation and slave trade, it fails to consign that stigma to the past.
Twenty twenty-four should mark a turning point. Be it through diplomacy, advocacy, periodic reporting or litigation, the time has come to hold the French government to account on economic and social rights in its former colonies—and to bridge the outremer gap.
Sabrina Cajoly is an independent human-rights lawyer. In 2023, she founded Kimbé Rèd—French West Indies (FWI), a civil-society organisation based in Guadeloupe, to protect and promote human rights across all French overseas territories.