Demande directe (CEACR) - adoptée 2024, publiée 113ème session CIT (2025)

Convention (n° 182) sur les pires formes de travail des enfants, 1999 - France (Ratification: 2001)

Articles 6 and 7(2)(b) of the Convention. Programmes of action and effective and time-bound measures. Direct assistance for the removal of children from the worst forms of child labour and for their rehabilitation and social integration. Sexual exploitation of children for commercial purposes. The Committee takes note of the Working Group on the prostitution of minors of 28 June 2021, which highlights that: (1) prostitution of minors is a phenomenon that has increased regularly over the past five years, which appears to affect more and more young persons and takes new forms; (2) the Domestic Security Ministerial Statistics Service (SSMSI) noted 400 minors that were victims of pimping in 2020 and the central office for the repression of human trafficking (OCRTEH) noted 219; and (3) the victims are very largely young girls aged between 15 and 17 years, vulnerable, from all social backgrounds and experiencing difficulties in coming to terms with their status as victims. The Committee notes that, following publication of the report of the Working Group, in November 2021 the Government launched the first National Plan to combat the prostitution of minors, of which the objectives are: (1) to better identify child victims, and support them in reconstructing their life path; and (2) to better penalize the clients and pimps.

The Committee also notes, from the 2022 report published by the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) in respect of France, that: (1) children at risk are taken into care by the Child Protection Service (ASE), even when there is an immediate need for them to be moved to a secure location; (2) these facilities are not adapted to the situation of child victims of trafficking, as the staff are not trained in providing this very specific type of care; (3) in addition, the child victims are not secure enough, and are immediately called back by traffickers, who sometimes form part of their family circle; and (4) some interlocutors reported that children have been recruited for sexual exploitation at these ASE centres. The Committee requests the Government to provide information on the specific measures taken, in particular in the context of the National Plan to combat the prostitution of minors, to: (i) prevent and combat the sexual exploitation of children for commercial purposes; (ii) identify the child victims of prostitution and provide the direct necessary and appropriate care to remove them from this worst form of child labour, and ensure their rehabilitation and social integration; and (iii) ensure that the child victims taken into care by the care centres are not revictimized. The Committee also requests the Government to communicate the results of measures taken in this regard, including providing information on the number of child victims of sexual exploitation for commercial purposes with whom contact has been established, who been removed and rehabilitated, and on the types of service from which they have benefitted in the context of their rehabilitation and social reintegration.