Arriving clandestinely from Morocco at 9, abandoned by her father: Rania Kissi is now an elected official in Paris

Rania Kissi’s journey began in Oujda, where she grew up with her mother and grandfather. In 2006, her father, whom she barely knew, returned to Morocco, claiming that he wanted to offer her a better future in France. Her mother then signed a document she believed was authorization to leave the country, but which was actually a renunciation of parental authority.

Aged 9, the girl crossed the border clandestinely, hidden in a car. With no legal status in France and unable to speak French, she settled in Val-d’Oise with her father, who had rebuilt his life and started a new family.

On Bladi.net : She takes in an abandoned little girl in Morocco: France demands €4,710 from her

While the other children went to school, Rania remained locked inside the home. She says she was confined to housework and looking after her young half-brother, before suffering violence whenever she tried to rebel.

Her absence from school eventually worried the neighbors. Fearing that she would attract attention, her father sent her to an aunt in northern France. There, she was finally enrolled in school. A teacher gave her French lessons every day and made her promise to read for twenty minutes a day.

But six months later, her father came back to get her. He took her to a social worker in Franconville and abandoned her there. “That’s the ‘thing’ I was telling you about,” he said, pointing to his daughter, Rania Kissi recounts today in a profile published by Le Monde.

Placed in care at 10, homeless at 18

On July 10, 2007, Rania was brought before a juvenile court judge. Once she felt reassured, she recounted her clandestine journey to France, her confinement and the beatings she had suffered. The judge ordered that she be placed with a foster family. The girl would live with two such families before reaching adulthood and officially became a ward of the state nearly three years after her arrival.

At school, Rania refused to accept the fate the institution seemed to have mapped out for her. Directed toward vocational education, she falsified documents in order to enroll in the general academic track. An excellent student, she obtained her baccalaureate in 2014 and wanted to pursue law studies.

At 18, however, she found herself without support and slept on the streets for three months. “Where people talked about equal opportunities, where people talked about social mobility, I was forgotten,” she recently testified on France Inter.

A teacher’s help ultimately enabled her to enter a social reintegration center, and then a university residence. She held jobs as a librarian, cashier and babysitter to finance her studies. In 2021, she earned a master’s degree in law.

That same year, Rania Kissi publicly revealed her story. She subsequently co-founded the Committee for Monitoring Children in Care and campaigned for reform of child protection. Last August, she published “Children in Care, Shattered Futures,” a book in which she combines her personal experience with concrete proposals.

Her commitment also led her into politics. In March 2026, she was elected to the Paris Council on Emmanuel Grégoire’s list, supported in particular by the Greens. She has already advocated there for the creation of an allowance for former children in care aged 18 to 24, as well as stronger efforts to combat the sexual exploitation of minors.

Yet Rania Kissi refuses to let her story be presented as proof that anyone can make it on their own. She describes herself as a “statistical anomaly” and points out that 70% of young people leaving the child welfare system have no diploma at 18. Her fight now consists of preventing children in care from needing such an exceptional journey to escape abandonment.