UN experts say French police used excessive force against student protesters

Four United Nations human rights experts said on Wednesday that French police have used excessive force against student demonstrators and that the scale of arrests, most of them involving minors, appears disproportionate to the right of peaceful assembly. The joint statement, issued by experts mandated by the UN Human Rights Council and published through the UN Human Rights Office, follows more than six weeks of near-daily protests across France that began with high school students and have since drawn in university students, teachers' unions and remnants of the Yellow Vest movement.

The statement was signed by Gina Romero, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and Farida Shaheed, the UN expert on cultural rights, among two other mandate holders. They said the injuries inflicted on underage demonstrators were "unacceptable and unjustifiable," and called for a comprehensive review of French policing strategies. The experts said they remain in contact with French authorities but had not received a substantive response before publishing their concerns, a pattern echoed by Human Rights Watch's own reporting on the protests earlier in October.

However, the scale of the arrests and detention, affecting several thousand people, mainly minors, appears disproportionate and deters demonstrators from exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Weeks of clashes, thousands detained

The numbers describing the crackdown vary somewhat depending on the date and the source counting them, but the direction is consistent. Human Rights Watch reported in mid-October that police had detained more than 6,800 people since the protests began on September 21, with about 86 percent of those held being children, and that French authorities had opened 36 internal investigations into alleged police misconduct. Two weeks earlier, Amnesty International cited an Interior Ministry figure of more than 5,000 arrests, 85 percent of them minors, as of early October.

Among the most severe injuries documented: a 15-year-old boy lost a hand after an explosive police stun grenade detonated near him, and a 14-year-old boy's jaw was shattered by a tear-gas canister fired at close range, according to Human Rights Watch. The French government subsequently announced a temporary suspension of stun grenades. At a single demonstration on October 24, authorities deployed roughly 70,000 security personnel nationwide and made about 1,000 arrests, while the Interior Ministry put total nationwide turnout that day at 410,000 people, according to Al Jazeera's account of the UN statement.

• Protests began September 21, 2026, over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and deteriorating school buildings
• More than 6,800 people detained since the movement began; roughly 86 percent are minors, per Human Rights Watch
• A 15-year-old lost a hand to a stun grenade; France has since suspended use of the device
• 36 internal police investigations opened; a Senate bill would make protesters jointly liable for up to €10,000 in damages

From school conditions to a national reckoning

The movement did not start as a protest about policing. It began in Paris-region high schools in late September over what students described as crumbling buildings, understaffed classrooms and a shrinking education budget, set against a broader national fiscal crisis that has forced the government to plan spending cuts. Alice Cohen-Morzadec, a spokesperson for the Union Étudiante, told Al Jazeera the unrest reflects wider resentment toward President Emmanuel Macron's government, and university students and Yellow Vest veterans have since folded cost-of-living grievances into the same marches.

The government has not been idle. Officials point to dialogue initiatives launched in October to address student demands, and the official record of the September 16 cabinet meeting shows the government was already moving, before the worst of the unrest, on a separate bill to make rioters and bystanders in violent crowds financially liable for property damage. The UN experts said that despite these overtures, the official response "sidelined the root causes" of the protests in favor of a security-first posture. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has said he intends to be "extremely vigilant, extremely firm" in the face of further unrest, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu convened a crisis meeting after protests turned violent in several cities.

A contested bill moves through the Senate

The crackdown and the UN statement have become entangled with a separate piece of legislation now before parliament. The French Senate this week is debating a government bill, filed under an accelerated procedure, that would create joint civil liability of up to €10,000 for anyone found to have "knowingly" joined a group in which violence or property damage occurred, even without proof that the individual caused or incited the damage. The bill would also let the state recover compensation through seizure of certain family and housing benefits. Rights groups, including Amnesty International, and French bar associations have criticized the measure as likely to chill participation in lawful protest, since liability would not require evidence of personal wrongdoing.

Supporters of the bill argue it responds to real costs: looting and vandalism accompanied some of the larger marches, notably clashes on October 17 that led to roughly 1,200 arrests in a single day and damage to public buildings in several cities. Critics counter that conflating accountability for property damage with the policing of an overwhelmingly peaceful youth movement risks punishing protest itself.

What happens next

The UN experts' recommendations are not binding, but they add international pressure on a government already facing domestic criticism from unions, lawyers and rights groups over its handling of the protests. The experts said they would continue engaging with French authorities, while Human Rights Watch has called on France to treat the internal investigations into police conduct with more rigor than past inquiries into Yellow Vest-era violence, which rarely led to accountability. The Senate's bill was expected to continue through committee stages after this week's floor debate, with further parliamentary steps still required before it could become law. Meanwhile, student organizers have signaled more demonstrations are planned in the weeks ahead, meaning the question of how police respond — and whether France's Interior Ministry revises its tactics as the UN experts urged — is likely to be tested again soon.