Following an Amnesty International report on Hijab bans in French sport, Anna Cusack, Advocacy and Policy Manager at Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, writes about the impact it will have at the upcoming Olympics and Paralympics.
OPINION: Like most sports fans, I’m counting down the days until the Olympic and Paralympic Games kick off in Paris. But as an advocate for gender diversity on and off the sports field, I’m concerned that France is trying to gloss over a serious human rights concern.
Behind the positive "gender parity" PR campaign of this year’s Olympics, Muslim women and girls who wear religious head coverings in France are facing structural discrimination through the strict dress codes imposed by French sports teams and federations. Bans on religious expression are being applied at all ages and stages, from primary school children to the athletes representing France at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
All women and girls should be able to make decisions about their bodies, their clothing and their expression and identity (including religious expression) without coercion, blackmail, humiliation, or punishment. This means that everyone should be free to choose whether they wear religious clothing or not. Compulsory veiling and state-enforced prohibitions on the wearing of religious clothing both violate international human rights law and standards.
In France, state authorities have embarked on a relentless campaign of harmful lawmaking and regulation of clothing that undermines a myriad of human rights for Muslim women and girls. In 2004, for example, France passed a law “governing, in application of the principle of secularism, the wearing of signs or dress expressing religious affiliation in public schools”. Clearly, this law discriminates against Muslim girls on grounds of race, religion and gender and restricts their rights to freedom of expression, religion or belief, and access to education. Such bans on religious clothing reflects a wider regime of gendered Islamophobia: a form of intersectional racism targeting Muslim women and girls.
When it comes to sports, there is no national law prohibiting the wearing of religious headgear, but French sports federations have been introducing restrictive dress codes in their individual regulations over the past few years. These apply to competitions across some of the most popular women’s sports, including football, basketball and volleyball, at both competitive and amateur levels. This means women are being excluded from the community-building, educational, health-related and economic opportunities that sport can provide.
Like many New Zealanders, I love playing social sports in my free time. Watching and supporting women’s sport is a really important part of my life and identity. Muslim women and girls in France are expressing the sadness and isolation that comes from being excluded from sport on the basis of their gender and religion. But many are speaking up for their human rights.
The Hijabeuses is a collective of women hijab-wearing football players campaigning for better inclusion of Muslim women and girls in sports. Formed in 2020, they are resisting the French Football Federation’s discriminatory ban on sports hijabs in competitions which was introduced in 2006.
Meanwhile, in my beloved sport of basketball, a group of women players have formed a collective called Basket Pour Toutes. Despite the threats of violence, harassment and humiliation, these groups are speaking out against the human rights violations they have faced.
The bans on religious clothing in France violate Muslim women’s rights under international human rights laws and standards, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both of which France has ratified. Under international human rights law, state neutrality and secularism are not legitimate reasons for imposing restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and religion or belief, including through general bans on religious and cultural symbols. Importantly, France is also bound by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women to counter gender-based stereotypes and promote the values of gender equality and non-discrimination.
Clearly, the crackdown on religious expression is undermining the commitments that France has made on the international stage. Discriminating against Muslim women and girls who wish to wear religious head coverings in sports is effectively blocking their chances of a professional sporting career. To me, this seriously undermines the assertion that 2024 is the year to celebrate Olympic gender parity.
The Olympic Charter states that, “the practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have access to the practice of sport, without discrimination of any kind in respect of internationally recognised human rights within the remit of the Olympic Movement.”
When the world is watching hundreds of athletes enjoy this right in remarkable feats of achievement, we must cast a critical eye on a host country which does not apply these Olympic values to everyone equitably.
