Office central de lutte contre les crimes contre l'humanité

The Central Office for Combating Core International Crimes and Hate Crimes (previously known as Central Office for Combatting Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide and War Crimes abbreviated  "OCLCH" in French) is a French inter-ministerial service. 

The Office is attached to the French National Gendarmerie. It coordinates and directs judicial investigations. It works against crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and crimes of torture. Its agents search for the authors, co-perpetrators and alleged accomplices of those offences. If they likely to be on the French territory the Central Office can take action against them.   

The motto of the OCLCH is: "Hora fugit, stat jus" ("time passes, law remains").

Creation and Missions

The Central Office for Combating Crimes against Humanity, Genocide and War Crimes was created on 5 November 2013. Considering the offenses it is in charge of, it has the particularity of exercising its activity within the legal framework of universal jurisdiction. It regularly sends his investigators abroad using international rogatory commissions, to places where the facts have been committed. There, in co-operation with the local authorities, it gathers the elements useful to the manifestation of the truth.

Organization

Like the Central Office for Combating Environmental Crime and Public Health (OCLAESP), the Central Office for Combating Illegal Labor (OCLTI) and the Central Office for Combatting Delinquency (OCLDI), the OCLCH is attached to the sub-directorate of the Judicial Police of the Directorate General of the National Gendarmerie.

The OCLCH maintains specific international relations and in particular with the foreign judicial units specialized in this same field. It is the single point of entry into France for its foreign counterparts (american FBI, german BKA, ...). As a mirror image, it is the recipient of requests for mutual legal assistance addressed to France by foreign states or international institutions (International Criminal Court (ICC), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), EULEX Kosovo, etc.).

Led by a brigadier general (NATO nomenclature: OF6) from the Gendarmerie Nationale, the general Jean-Philippe Reiland, the Office staff consists of 30+ civil servants, coming from the gendarmerie, the national police and the Ministry of Defense. It is completed by operational reservists.

In August 2020 a division was created within the OCLCH dedicated to the fight against hate crimes, in particular racist, anti-Semitic, anti-religious or LGBT-phobic acts. This creation was motivated by the fact that, although the decree creating the OCLCH already included the fight against hate crimes in its missions, there were relatively few commitments by the office on these subjects, because it gave priority to the fight against crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. However, the increase in hate crimes over the years, which have been poorly taken into account, led to the decision to specialise a group of gendarmes on this particular mission, with a strong emphasis on monitoring social networks. There are seven gendarmes who investigate full-time in this division. The division can be contacted in different ways: either by a report on the Pharos platform, or by the public prosecutor's office to which a complaint has been filed. Its work is done in collaboration with the national centre for combating online hate. 

On 21 December 2021, by Decree No. 2021-1738, the Prime Minister amended Decree No. 2013-987 of 5 November 2013 creating the OCLCH. This text clarifies the scope of the missions of this central office in terms of hate crimes, by setting out precisely the offences for which it is competent in this area. It also adds crimes of enforced disappearance to the list of the most serious international crimes for which the OCLCH has jurisdiction. 

The new decree also changes the name of this central office to "Central Office for Combating Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes" to better reflect its focus and activity.

Other websites 
  on service-public.fr, the French official portal   .

 "Gendarmerie nationale - notre institution - les offices " (in French) on the official website of the gendarmerie nationale.

Pages with citations lacking titles
Pages with citations having bare URLs
Crimes against humanity
War crimes
Genocide
Crime in France
2013 establishments in France