Rule of Law Backsliding in France

By Human Rights Watch

Click to expand Image Riot police barricade, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, December 8, 2018. © 2018 Human Rights Watch On December 9, CIVICUS Monitor, a nongovernmental group assessing civic freedoms globally, downgraded France’s civic space from “narrowed” to “obstructed.”The downgrade is the result of years of attacks on civic space, marked by “escalating police violence, surveillance practices, and arrests of protesters, targeting of journalists, and persistent restrictions on fundamental rights,” according to CIVICUS. The French government is also increasingly using heavy-handed…

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