Tue 26 April 2022:
Amnesty International has called on French President Emmanuel Macron to make the protection of human rights a priority for his second term in office after he beat his far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Sunday.
“President Macron’s first term has been far from exemplary on human rights and Amnesty International will continue, throughout his second term, to demand that the President’s policies respect fundamental rights and international law,” said the rights watchdog shortly after Macron’s victory was announced.
Amnesty raised France’s treatment of refugees at its borders, “dangerously vague” counter-terror laws and selling arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE as examples of when the European country had fallen short of upholding human rights.
In December last year the French president and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Al-Nahyan signed a $19.2 billion arms deal, the largest ever bulk order for the Rafaela fighter jet.
Human Rights Watch criticised the sale at the time, questioning why it was going ahead even though the UAE played a leading role in Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.
In September last year several civil society organisations filed a lawsuit at the Administrative Court of Paris against the French government’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
On Sunday, Amnesty International called on Macron to return and resettle French children detained in Syria without delay.
There are 200 French children living in camps in northeast Syria in terrible conditions and France has only repatriated 35 children.
Not only is there little food and clean water but the conditions themselves leave the kids living there at risk of radicalisation, many human rights organisations have warned.
At the beginning of April, the United Nations said that Al-Hol, one of the camps in northeast Syria, is a “ticking time bomb. If it goes off, it will impact not only the region but also far beyond.”
Tens of thousands relatives of Daesh fighters have been held there, the majority of whom are women and children.
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