The League of Human Rights and Cimade criticized on Monday the proposal of the Minister of the Interior and Overseas, Gérald Darmanin, to toughen the attribution of French nationality to children born in Mayotte, made the day before during a trip to this French department in the Indian Ocean.

For a newborn to benefit from land rights, the minister wants at least one of their parents to have resided regularly on the island for at least one year, compared to the current three months.

In July 2018, the National Assembly voted in favor of adapting the land law to Mayotte, to deal with the very strong illegal immigration from the Comoros, after a lively debate, even within the majority. The article introduced in the Senate required for children born in Mayotte that one of their parents, on the day of birth, had been regularly present in the national territory for more than three months. In the rest of France, no period of residence is required.

A reform “will only make the situation worse”

Gérald Darmanin’s proposal “reaches a little more than the ground law in this department,” the League for Human Rights (LDH) said in a press release on Monday, considering that it represented “one more step towards the discriminatory situation of the poorest”. department of France (74% of the population of Mayotte live below the poverty line)”.

“This hasty selective and repressive precipitation will not solve anything and will only aggravate the situation of inequality and exclusion of the inhabitants of Mayotte,” estimates the LDH, which claims for the Mahorais and Mahoraises “the same equal rights that are recognized in all the territories of the Republic”.

The local branch of La Cimade also denounced this announcement because “increasing to one year instead of the current three months the obligation of regular stay of at least one of the parents before the birth will only reinforce a situation with already dramatic consequences for Thousands”. of children and young people born and raised in Mayotte, already deprived of access to nationality since the last asylum and immigration law and condemned to administrative wandering”.

“Can this youth deprived of hope, prevented from accessing studies, training, the world of work, participate in the harmonious development of the island?” Questions the association in a press release published on social networks, lamenting not be consulted on the matter.