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French MPs debate law to make school bullying punishable by 3 years in jail

France's parliament began examining a draft law on Wednesday that would make bullying at school punishable by up to three years in jail as part of efforts to combat the scourge.

French MPs debate law to make school bullying punishable by 3 years in jail
Illustration photo: Patrick Herzog/AFP

The proposals won support from Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and are expected to be backed by a majority of lawmakers from President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling coalition and the right-wing Republicans party.

“We will never accept the lives of our children being shattered,” Blanquer said during a debate, calling the draft law “a way of enforcing the values of the republic.”

As well as increasing resources for prevention and education, the legislation would create a new crime of “school bullying” which would carry a maximum three-year jail term and a fine of up to €45,000, depending on the severity of the case and the age of the culpit.

In cases that involved the victim committing suicide, or attempting to, the punishment could be up to 10 years in prison.

Several bullying cases that have ended in tragedy have made headlines in France this year, including the suicide of a 14-year-old girl in the eastern Alsace region in October who was harrassed after she confessed to classmates that she was gay.

In March, the body of another 14-year-old girl was found in the river Seine in Paris.

She had suffered severe bullying from fellow pupils after photos of her in her underwear were stolen from her phone.

She was then allegedly attacked and murdered by two teenagers who were arrested afterwards.   

Left-wing opponents of the government criticised the proposed law.

Sabine Rubin from the France Unbowed party called it a “illusionary and demagogic over-reaction.”

“We are not in favour of criminalising minors and increasing repression,” Michele Victory, an MP from the Socialist party, said ahead of Wednesday’s parliamentary debate.

Bullying can already be prosecuted in France under laws criminalising harassment, opponents say.

Erwan Balanant, an MP from the centrist MoDem party who drafted the legislation, said the law would have “a pedogogic value.”

“The idea is to engage with the whole of society,” he said.

As many as one in ten French school pupils suffer from bullying at some time, surveys show, and experts say the age-old problem has changed in nature because of mobile phones and social networks which often cause public humiliation for victims.

France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, who is a former teacher, has made combating bullying a focus of her charity work since 2017.

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POLITICS

French bill seeks to ban hair discrimination affecting black women

France's parliament on Thursday began debating a bill targeting workplace discrimination based on hair texture which the draft law's backers say targets mostly black women wearing their hair naturally.

French bill seeks to ban hair discrimination affecting black women

Olivier Serva, an independent National Assembly deputy for the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe and the bill’s sponsor, said it would penalise any workplace discrimination based on “hair style, colour, length or texture”.

Similar laws exist in around 20 US states which have identified hair discrimination as an expression of racism.

In Britain, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued guidelines against hair discrimination in schools.

Serva, who is black, said women “of African descent” were often encouraged before job interviews to change their style of hair.

‘Target of discrimination’

The deputy, who also included discrimination suffered by blondes and redheads in his proposal, points to an American study stating that a quarter of black women polled said they had been ruled out for jobs because of how they wore their hair at the job interview.

Such statistics are hard to come by in France, which bans the compilation of personal data that mention a person’s race or ethnic background on the basis of the French Republic’s “universalist” principles.

The draft law does not, in fact, contain the term “racism”, noted Daphne Bedinade, a social anthropologist, saying the omission was problematic.

“To make this only about hair discrimination is to mask the problems of people whose hair makes them a target of discrimination, mostly black women,” she told Le Monde daily.

While statistics are difficult to come by, high-profile people have faced online harassment because of their hairstyle.

In the political sphere they include former government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye, and Audrey Pulvar, a deputy mayor of Paris, whose afro look has attracted much negative comment online.

The bill’s critics say it is unnecessary, as discrimination based on looks is already banned by law.

“There is no legal void here,” said Eric Rocheblave, a lawyer specialising in labour law.

Calling any future law “symbolic”, Rocheblave said it would not be of much practical help when it came to proving discrimination in court.

Kenza Bel Kenadil, an influencer and self-proclaimed “activist against hair discrimination”, said a law would still send an important message.

“It would tell everybody that the law protects you in every way and lets you style your hair any way you want,” she said.

The influencer, who has 256,000 followers on Instagram, said she herself had been “forced” to tie her hair in a bun when she was working as a receptionist.

Her employers were “very clear”, she said. “It was, either you go home and fix your hair or you don’t come here to work”.

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