The worldwide health emergency has made marginalized groups’ daily plight for survival much more difficult. With authorities arriving to evict asylum seekers and migrants from their makeshift camps every other day, and national borders closed, there is now little to no hope for these people to search for a better life elsewhere.

Like in other parts of the world, charities in France have sadly been forced to reduce aid in weeks of lockdown. Many of these charities were set up to meet the needs of around a thousand people in the northern French port of Calais.

“There’s less of a presence in the camps – less services. So the conditions are getting worse. And from another side, those who are helping are prevented from doing so. We’ve had 26 fines for going out on patrol, delivering food, or blankets. And four members of the team were taken into custody, while carrying out humanitarian work,”

Antoine Nehr, a coordinator at a charity named Utopia

There are few NGOs that have received proper authorization to deliver food to asylum seekers in areas near Calais. These camps can become extremely crowded, and even though basic medical checks are carried out each day, the spread of Coronavirus could possibly start circling undetected. No one has been infected with COVID-19 yet, but the sanitary conditions are extremely unsafe.

Even though the virus presents a very serious threat to these people, they have over and over again said that the abominable conditions in which they live in affect them much more. There are around 600 people living in these camps.

An asylum seeker named Dana Babaie has insisted that they are simply not afraid of Coronavirus. She recognizes that everyone has survived some extreme circumstances and dangerous situations much worse than the one we are currently facing, but that the living conditions are simply intolerable.

Many of these migrants and asylum seekers have applied to obtain the necessary documents to construct a life in France, however the pandemic has put the answers to these administrative procedures on hold. With lockdown in this country starting to slowly lift, eviction is becoming more and more of a threat.

Even during the pandemic, those who are most deprived face many challenges when trying to access care. Mobile health teams have been deployed all across France to help the most vulnerable groups receive proper protection from and detection of Coronavirus.

One of these teams was sent to a disused garage that has been transformed into a squat, with around 80 people living here. This community shares two toilets and a water hose as their sanitary options. Even though no cases of Coronavirus has been identified here, health professionals still say that there is a very high chance of the risk.

According to Samuel Guevart from Medecins du Monde, there are numerous vulnerable health conditions that could become very serious when paired with COVID-19, such as cardiovascular or respiratory diseases.

“How do we properly take care of the most fragile, the homeless, and give them decent living conditions, to avoid problems we’re seeing? If we’d taken care of this before we’d probably have far fewer serious cases and better follow up”

Samuel Guevart

Numerous families have resorted to begging for survival, a plight that has become near impossible during the lockdown. Although it is quite the challenge, these families have insisted that they have exhausted any other options.

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