'100 percent prevention': France unveils anti-bullying measures
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Transcript
00:00 in France this afternoon. The government is announcing a new national plan to
00:04 combat bullying in schools. It follows several recent teen suicides. The Prime
00:11 Minister Elizabeth Bourne has been making that announcement this afternoon
00:15 and listening to the details was Clovis Casale, our reporter who's with me now.
00:20 Clovis, what's the Prime Minister saying about what this new plan will look like?
00:25 It's very technical but there are three main axes. 100% prevention, 100%
00:31 detection, 100% solutions. That's the official line of the French government.
00:37 Elizabeth Bourne, the French Prime Minister, is saying that children who are
00:40 bullies don't always realize that they are bullying and they don't realize
00:44 that they're doing anything wrong. We're talking some children who are age 7, 8,
00:48 9 and they're not always got the tools intellectually to be able to understand
00:54 that they're bullying. That's not an excuse obviously and the French
00:58 government wants to crack down on bullies. So what are they going to do? The
01:02 French government's saying they want to train students, parents, teachers. This by
01:07 the end of Emmanuel Macron's mandate and also policemen and judges who will be
01:15 able and who will be asked to go to schools to talk about bullying, why it's
01:20 wrong to do so and the risks for students who commit such acts. The idea
01:27 is really to understand, hear the victims because very often children who are
01:32 bullied don't dare to speak out, aren't ready to speak out because they think
01:36 they will certainly not be heard. Other important point maybe in the detection
01:43 field if you will, at school students, pupils aged maybe 8 to 15 every year
01:51 they will be given a form that they will fill in and say whether they're being
01:56 bullied, what kind of bullying they are experiencing, suffering. All the students
02:01 will be asked to fill that and there will also be special forms given to
02:05 police forces in order for them to hear better and record better any kind of
02:11 complaints regarding bullying. And explain to us Clovis why the government
02:14 has decided to roll out this national strategy now. One very key figure over
02:19 the last three years Prime Minister Bond said 1 million children suffered from
02:25 bullying. That's a huge figure. You could expect the Education Minister Gabrielle
02:30 Attal to address the French people and make this press conference. No, it's the
02:35 Prime Minister and there are various ministers around her, Interior Minister,
02:39 Justice one, Health one, because basically it's a collegial work if you will. It's
02:44 an inter-ministerial conference and government plan and it's taken extremely
02:51 seriously by the government. Elizabeth Bond saying it's actually one of its
02:55 utmost priorities during her mandate and of course there have been several cases
03:01 of children, of teenagers who took their own lives in recent months and that
03:05 really shocked everyone here in France.