There is no quick fix to the problems of France's suburban ghettos, which made world headlines during weeks of rioting in 2005, but activist-turned-minister Fadela Amara says the government is finally on the right track. President Nicolas Sarkozy caused a sensation last year when he persuaded Amara, a firebrand feminist of North African immigrant origin, to join his government as secretary of state for urban policy, in charge of reviving the poor suburbs.
Amara had faced criticism for failing to find enough cash for her mission but she says every ministry now directs a portion of its funds at policies in the ghettos, totalling 4.3 billion euros ($5.9 billion) in the proposed 2009 budget.
That money includes 769 million euros for her department, up nine percent from this year. "For years, including when the left was in power, there was only one ministry working on the suburbs, where 6 million of our fellow citizens live in difficult conditions. Today the entire government is involved," Amara told Reuters in her Paris office.
Bad transport links, failing schools and high unemployment have turned many high-rise suburbs ringing wealthy city centres into ghettos for the poor, with high concentrations of people of immigrant origin who feel cut off from a prejudiced society. Amara plans to build new transport links, improve schools and help young people from the suburbs find jobs.
"Since I joined the government I have never been worried about funding because President Sarkozy has said clearly that the issue of the suburbs is a national priority," she said. Amara rose to fame as the leader of "Ni putes ni soumises" ("Neither whores nor submissive women"), defending women in the ghettos against pressure from increasingly radical young Muslim men who branded them whores if they didn't cover up.
Now those young men are among the targets of her plan and under the flagship measure, training institutes will receive public money to go and find them "even in the stairwells where they hang out" and help them enter the job market.
"The aim is to reach out to some 80,000 young people aged under 26 who have slipped through all the nets," Amara said, adding that unemployment in that age category reached over 40 percent in many of the poorest housing estates.
"The training will include guidance on how to act in society - how to talk properly, how to behave in a professional environment, respect of hierarchies, of timetables," Amara said. "After so much discrimination, these young people are hungry for success, they have amazing determination. So they're twice as motivated when they get a job. It's win-win for everybody."
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