‘Muslim girls and women who put on the hijab should have equal rights to take part in cultural and sporting life,’ UN specialists say.
United Nations rights specialists have slammed selections in France barring girls and women who put on the Muslim headband from sports activities competitions as “discriminatory”, demanding they be reversed.
France invoked its strict guidelines on secularism to ban its athletes from carrying spiritual symbols, together with the hijab, throughout the Paris 2024 Olympics.
France’s soccer and basketball federations have additionally opted to exclude gamers carrying the headband from competitions, together with on the newbie stage.
These selections “are disproportionate and discriminatory, and infringe on their rights [of French athletes] to freely manifest their id, their faith or perception in personal and in public, and to participate in cultural life,” mentioned the assertion, signed by eight impartial UN specialists, issued on Monday.
“Muslim girls and women who put on the hijab should have equal rights to take part in cultural and sporting life, and to participate in all features of French society of which they’re a component,” they mentioned.
The assertion was signed by the UN particular rapporteurs on cultural rights, on minority points, and on freedom of faith and perception, and members of the UN working group on discrimination towards girls and women.
They’re impartial specialists appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, however who don’t converse on behalf of the UN.
France’s legal guidelines on secularism are supposed to maintain the state impartial in spiritual issues, whereas guaranteeing residents the appropriate to freely practise their faith.
Amongst different issues, they prohibit pupils and academics in faculties in addition to civil servants from carrying “ostentatious” spiritual symbols.
However the specialists insisted that “the neutrality and secular nature of the state usually are not reliable grounds for imposing restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of faith or perception.”
“Any limitations of those freedoms should be proportionate, obligatory to succeed in one of many targets said in worldwide regulation [safety, health and public order, the rights and freedoms of others], and justified by information… and never by presumptions, assumptions or prejudices,” they mentioned.
“In a context of intolerance and powerful stigmatisation of ladies and women who select to put on the hijab, France should take all measures at its disposal to guard them, to safeguard their rights, and to advertise equality and mutual respect for cultural variety.”
The French contingent on the dwelling Olympics in Paris didn’t embrace any hijab-wearing athletes. Nonetheless, the Worldwide Olympic Committee allowed contributors to put on the hijab within the athletes’ village.