French authorities are quickly ramping up efforts to remove the homeless and migrants from Paris, some say, in a bid to shore up security ahead of the 2024 Olympics
- Among those targeted for removal are the homeless, foreign migrants, Roma people, sex workers, and drug users, according to data gathered by over 80 NGOs.
- Human rights groups say authorities have increased the rate at which squats, informal settlements, and tent cities are being cleared from public view. The affected individuals are then bussed out of the city or remanded to “regional reception facilities” in other regions.
- The move has sparked accusations of “social cleansing” from migrant NGOs, who called the removal of those living in Parisian squats “evictions” aimed at making these people “invisible” to international guests.
By the numbers: Those monitoring French policing methods have studied a marked uptick in such removals.
- Eviction orders in the Paris region have more than tripled in 3 years, from 15 in 2021-2022 to nearly 50 in 2023-2024.
- Almost 4,000 people were transferred from Paris to temporary shelters across France in 2023.
- Homelessness in Paris increased by 16% from 2023 to 2024, with at least 3,492 people on the streets.
The conversation: French police have officially denied any role in forcibly “managing the homeless,” while others have criticized the seemingly heavy-handed response to the issue.
- “This has nothing to do with the Olympic and Paralympic Games, there’s no social cleansing…This emergency accommodation policy aims to spread the burden across the country. Operations of this type are carried out regularly, its not dictated by the Olympic and Paralympic agenda,” said France’s Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra said in March.
- “Evictions to beautify Paris before [the Olympics] are similar to what China, India or many others have done before other mega-events. How does France justify this?” Asked UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal on X/Twitter.
The Big Picture: France’s authority to remove what many consider to be the dregs of modern society is a move that is widely embraced by many world powers, including China, Brazil, Russia, and the United States.
It also comes amid heightened concern for acts of terror, migrant attacks, and other security threats that regularly plague the Western world.
- Just this month, the chief of police in Paris, Laurent Nuñez, said that “Islamist terrorism remains our main concern” ahead of the 2024 Olympics, while pointing to a May arrest of two suspected Chechen terrorists who had allegedly planned on targeting the games.
- In February, a Black man from Mali was arrested for his alleged role in a savage knife and hammer attack in a Parisian train station, critically injuring three. Prosecutors claim the man had specifically “target(ed) French people because they belong to the French nation.”
- Many in France are still reeling from the deadly and coordinated Islamist terrorist attacks of November 2015, which resulted in 138 dead and 416 injured in a series of shootings and suicide bombings erupting at the Bataclan Theater and the Stade de France in Saint-Denis. To this day, it is regarded as the deadliest attack in the European Union.
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