Former justice minister Christiane Taubira is running in the French presidential elections.
The left-wing politician announced her candidacy in Lyon on Saturday and announced that she wanted to work primarily for social justice, environmental protection and young people.
She wants to lead a government "that knows how to conduct a dialogue instead of moralizing and bullying," said the 69-year-old politician.
Taubira, who is from French Guiana, was Minister of Justice under Socialist President François Hollande. She was considered an icon of the left wing in the government at the time. In 2016 she resigned in the dispute over constitutional reform. After the attacks in Paris in November 2015, Hollande wanted to ensure that French people with dual citizenship could be deprived of their citizenship after they had been convicted of a terrorist offense. The constitutional amendment ultimately failed.
Taubira promotes women's and homosexual rights as well as Black Lives Matter and embodies left-wing identity politics.
She was also instrumental in establishing slavery as a crime against humanity and advocated for gay marriage.
In 2002 she had already contested the presidential election, when she got 2.3 percent of the votes.
Polls for the April election point to President Emmanuel Macron's re-election, although he has not yet officially announced his candidacy.
The left camp was already completely fragmented before Taubira's candidacy.
All of the five left-wing candidates so far, including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and Leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, are below ten percent in the polls.