Seine-Saint-Denis, a department that has hosted around a hundred children repatriated from Syria and Iraq since 2016, calls on the Children's Defender on Friday, November 20, so that the State supports it financially in this care.
Read also: In France, the delicate follow-up of "children of jihad"
This department is on the front line in the reception of children returning from the Iraqi-Syrian zone, who arrive on French soil at Roissy airport.
They are then taken care of by the Bobigny public prosecutor's office.
"
State support is becoming absolutely necessary,
" writes Stéphane Troussel, socialist president of the poorest department in France, in this letter to Eric Delemar, just appointed Defender of Children.
Currently, 74 children are entrusted to the ASE (Social Assistance to Children) of 93, out of the 94 received by the department since 2016. “
It is no longer possible (...) that the Department of Seine- Saint-Denis, already fragile, alone and without state aid bears the weight of this national solidarity issue
, ”Troussel warned on Friday, international day of children's rights.
The expenses represented by this support amount to "
several million euros
" per year, he writes.
Troussel, who had already asked for help from the government in 2018 and 2019, also says that a subsidy of 250,000 euros, or 9% of expenditure in this area, promised in 2018, has never been paid.
About 150 adults and nearly 300 French children are detained in prison or in camps in Syria and Iraq.
In Al-Hol, in northeastern Syria, 517 people, including 371 children, died in 2019, according to a Kurdish Red Crescent official.