French court orders water, latrines and garbage pickup at Calais refugee camp

A French court has ordered the country’s authorities to improve conditions at the giant “new jungle” migrant camp in Calais after NGOs called for immediate action over “serious human rights violations”.

The court in Lille in northern France ordered the department of Pas-de-Calais and the town of Calais to install 10 more water stations – with five taps each, 50 latrines and “one or several” more access points to emergency services at the overflowing migrant site where some 6,000 people are now camped out in the cold.

Doctors of the World and Catholic Relief Services, as well as other NGOs, appealed to the court to “end serious human rights violations” of the migrants living in the camp where the number of inhabitants has nearly doubled since the end of September.

The so-called “new jungle” camp, which is about an hour away on foot from the centre of the northern French city, has swelled in size over recent months as more and more migrants arrive, wanting to cross over to Britain.

Along with the new sanitation stations, the administrative court ordered the installation of garbage collection sites and general cleaning of the camp, with eight days to implement the new measures and a €100 ($110) fine for each day of delay.

The Pas-de-Calais prefecture must also begin in the next 48 hours to identify unaccompanied minors in distress and to begin the process of their placement.

The prefecture said in a statement that it will implement the measures in the time alloted.

Patrice Spinosi, the lawyer for the NGOs, told AFP that it was “a first victory”, but that there was still a lot of work to be done in the camp.

Some of the other requests by the NGOs, like using vacant houses to shelter migrants and upping the meal distribution to twice a day for all 6,000 people versus 2,500 meals once a day, were not approved by the court.

The Doctors of the World director for France, Jean-François Corty, called the decision “exceptional” because the court ordered the state to take emergency measures.

Last month the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, ordered reinforced security and heated tents for women and children in Calais as migrants prepare to face the season’s bitter cold.