The mayor of Paris announced Tuesday that a “humanitarian camp” will be set up in the French capital in the next six weeks, to support the hundreds of homeless migrants in the city.
Advertisement
Makeshift migrant camps have become an issue of growing concern for Paris authorities in the past year.
She said Parisians have a humane duty to help refugees and migrants, adding that she’s confident ‘the Paris population will be at our side’.
The facility will serve as a day center, but the city also plans to build modular accommodation units that could be constructed rapidly and would ensure people’s comfort.
Paris is considered a transit point for thousands of immigrants and refugees who try to reach Calais, from where they try to cross to the United Kingdom. In the past few days alone, nearly 800 people have begun squatting near a public park in the city’s 18th arrondissement, or district.
A visibly frustrated Hidalgo said she had alerted the relevant state authorities to the situation in Paris several times but was still waiting for a response.
Criticising the dire living conditions of refugees, the Paris mayor said that the authorities are looking for a location in order to build a camp for the people.
In March, almost a thousand people were removed from the camp, which had mushroomed in the wake of the destruction of the Jungle camp in Calais.
Advertisement
France has not been in the frontline of the vast influx of migrants to Europe in the last 18 months, with many refugees seeing it as a transit country to other destinations in northern Europe.
