“Overseas people must no longer be excluded from the European Social Charter” | EUROtoday

NWe, residents, jurists, political leaders, researchers, lecturers, artists, commerce unionists, personalities and actors of civil society from French territories often called “overseas”, France, Europe and from all walks of life, denounce a silent inequality on the coronary heart of the Republic and Europe: the exclusion of “overseas” folks from a elementary human rights treaty – the European Social Charter.

Adopted in 1961, ratified by France in 1973, revised in 1996, the constitution enshrines all elementary financial and social rights such because the rights to work, training, well being, housing, social safety and non-discrimination. It constitutes the idea of social rights in Europe. However, almost 3 million folks residing within the eleven inhabited territories, unfold over 5 continents and 4 oceans, have been excluded for greater than fifty years.

The National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, in a press release official revealed in September 2024, thought of this case opposite to worldwide human rights legislation and the French Constitution. Legally certified as “colonial clause”this provision maintains a structural inequality between French residents relying on their place of residence. This injustice is all of the extra unacceptable provided that these populations, who contribute immensely to the wealth of France and Europe, are experiencing the best social difficulties: mass unemployment, persistent poverty, excessive value of residing, unequal entry to healthcare and public providers, challenges in accessing ingesting water and environmental harm. Where, in keeping with the precept of equalization, safety ought to be strongest, it’s weakest. This imbalance nourishes a deep feeling of injustice and the impression of being the item of the best contempt. This exclusion just isn’t summary: it has concrete penalties. In 2025, it led France and Europe, on the one hand, to reject an attraction on entry to ingesting water and chlordecone air pollution within the Antilles, and, however, to exclude “overseas” from a European report on the price of residing disaster. Its authors introduced France as a “example of good practice”whereas in “overseas”, the place the poverty price is 5 to fifteen occasions larger than in France, populations are asphyxiated by exorbitant costs and have lengthy been mobilized to denounce the excessive value of residing.

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