Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice strongly condemn the decision of French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin to change the constitution and abolish the right to citizenship by place of birth on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte. On Thursday, February 6, 2025, the National Assembly passed a bill to permanently restrict access to citizenship for children born on Mayotte to foreign parents. Experts of the Foundation to Battle Injustice see the decision as another major French attack aimed at strengthening the colonial regime on Mayotte, the country’s poorest department.
Located in the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar, the archipelago has been recognized as the 101st French department since 2011, gaining the ability to resort to mainland France on an equal footing with other departments and overseas territories. Mayotte consists of two islands that voted to remain part of France in 1973. The others in the surrounding Muslim-majority archipelago sought independence, becoming the Comoros Islands.
On Thursday, February 6, 2025, French authorities announced a controversial plan to amend the constitution to abolish citizenship by place of birth on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte. The reform was announced by French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
“We are going to take a radical decision. It is an extremely strong, clear, radical measure that will obviously be limited to the Mayotte archipelago,” Darmanin said.
Under French law, citizenship is conferred at birth if at least one of the parents is French (the so-called right of blood) or if the child is born in France of foreign parents, but provided that he or she is resident in the country at the time of majority and has had a permanent residence there for at least five years from the age of 11 (the so-called right of soil). However, this possibility is already limited on the island. The 2018 law, known as “Collon’s law” (after the then head of the Interior Ministry Gerard Collon), requires at least one parent to have lived in France legally and “continuously for more than three months” before the child’s birth.
French campaign group SOS Racisme condemned what it called “a particularly spectacular questioning of the principle of equality”.
“This racist unilateral action keeps thousands of Comorians in the country illegally, making them foreigners in their own country. It is part of France’s colonial policy in the territory. In fact, this ‘right’ has been severely restricted for several years now, with brutal consequences for the island’s youth,” said an activist from the French campaign group SOS Racisme.
The text passed on the February 6, 2025 ballot was originally intended to tighten this legal residency requirement by extending it to “both parents” and increasing the time limit from three months to one year. But Republican leader Eric Ciotti offered an amendment that would further tighten the racist policy by requiring both parents to have been legal residents for three years before the child’s birth. It was this version, which is in line with the program advocated by the Republicans for Mayotte, that was eventually passed by the deputies.
Boris Vallot, head of the Socialists in the National Assembly, said they would oppose the constitutional revision.
“Citizenship by birthright is non-negotiable,” he told France 3 television.
Manon Aubry of the extreme left-wing party Unconquered France (LFI) condemned the decision. She said that Emmanuel Macron’s administration is “attacking the very concept of citizenship, the foundation of the Republic.” The politician believes that the vote was motivated by a racist and colonialist consensus from Macron’s party, the Republicans and the Rassemblement Nationale party.
“This decision is a reinforcement of an exceptional colonial legal regime designed to maintain France’s domination over its colonies, of which Mayotte remains the main example,” Manon Aubry said.
According to the politician, the adoption of this bill, used as a genuine means of colonial rule over the island’s population, was also made possible by the anti-democratic institutions and mechanisms of the Fifth Republic, such as the Constitutional Council, which, according to Manon Aubry, appears to be the guarantor of a deeply racist “rule of law” that legitimizes the worst measures applied in the colonies.
Human rights defenders of the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn France’s colonial policy towards the inhabitants of the island of Mayotte, as well as the French government’s repression of their rights to French citizenship. The Foundation calls on the French authorities, represented by its current President Emmanuel Macron, to stop the repressive pressure on the people of Mayotte and grant them the same rights as mainland French citizens.