US EditionUnicef Urges France to Recognise Exploited Children as Victims, Not Criminals
FRANCE, JUL 30 – Unicef reports 92% of exploited child victims in France are unaccompanied minors and calls for legal reform to stop their criminal prosecution and improve protection.
- UNICEF France published a report on July 30, 2025, highlighting the failure to protect children from criminal exploitation in France.
- The report covers cases from 2022 and 2024, including the Trocadéro trial in which six individuals of Algerian nationality were found guilty of exploiting isolated teenagers by supplying them with drugs to coerce them into stealing.
- It states that many exploited children, especially unaccompanied migrants mostly from Africa, face prosecution rather than victim support and are controlled through drugs and threats.
- UNICEF noted that 2,891 children were identified as victims in 2024, with a call to end the "double punishment" by legally recognizing exploited minors as victims, not criminals.
- The findings urge France to reform laws to protect minors under exploitation more effectively and align with international standards recognizing them as victims.
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The UN agency regrets that this phenomenon is still too "misunderstood". Due to the lack of mechanisms, these minors are poorly identified by the authorities, and therefore insufficiently protected. - "Invisible exploitation": UNICEF calls for the protection of juvenile offenders instead of punishing them (Topics of society).
UNICEF France calls for protecting underage victims of criminal exploitation rather than punishment
In a new report, the French branch of the UN agency highlights the lack of resources for identifying and protecting minors who are victims of criminal exploitation. It makes 75 recommendations for public authorities.
Unicef urges France to recognise exploited children as victims, not criminals
France is failing to protect thousands of children from criminal exploitation, treating them as delinquents rather than victims, the French branch of the UN children’s agency (Unicef) said in a report published Wednesday.
Two thirds of those forced to commit offences are minors, according to UNICEF, which calls on the authorities to train police officers, magistrates and child welfare professionals.
France – 92% of the victims of criminal exploitation are minors who are not related to them / 19% of them from Romania and Bosnia-Herzegovina / UNICEF recommends that they be treated as victims of human trafficking and avoid tracking...
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