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Paris, France: The ban on French women athletes wearing the hijab at the Paris Olympic Games exposes the “discriminatory hypocrisy” of French authorities and the “craven weakness” of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Amnesty International said on Tuesday, July 16.

In a new report titled “We can’t breathe anymore. Even sports, we can’t do them anymore”, the rights group examines the negative impact of the hijab ban on Muslim women and girls at all levels of sport in France.

The report found that the hijab ban violates international human rights laws.

In September last year, France’s sports minister, Amelie Oudea-Castera, announced that no member of the French delegation would be allowed to wear the headscarf during the Olympic Games, which will take place in France from 26 July to 11 August.

“The representatives of our delegations in our French teams will not wear the veil,” the minister said, emphasising the government’s “attachment to a regime of strict secularism, strictly applied in the field of sport”.

“This means the prohibition of any form of proselytism, the absolute neutrality of public service,” she added.

A few days later, the IOC clarified that the restrictions would not apply to athletes representing other nations at the event.

The ban indeed contradicts IOC regulations, which consider the headscarf worn by many Muslim women as cultural and non-cultural clothing.

In breach of legal obligations

The decision to ban French athletes from wearing the hijab during the Olympics has faced sharp criticism from human rights experts and triggered a wave of anger online, with some social media users calling for a boycott of the event.

“Oh no… We’ll have to boycott the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris as the minister of sports just explained that French athletes won’t be able to wear the hijab. Is it also for foreign athletes!?! If yes, then the American Ibtihaj Muhammad couldn’t have won her bronze medal,” one person posted on X after the ban was announced.

“Welcome to the first Islamophobic Olympics in history!” French historian Fabrice Riceputi recently wrote on the same platform.

During a press briefing in Geneva following the ban’s announcement, a spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that the UN body “believes that no one should dictate to a woman what she should or should not wear”.

In October, six UN human rights experts wrote to French authorities expressing concern that the ban violates the right of Muslim women and girls “to participate in sport” and could “fuel intolerance and discrimination against them”.

In France, women and girls who wear sports headgear are prohibited from practising many sports, including football, basketball, judo, boxing, volleyball and badminton, even sometimes at the amateur level.

Among 38 European countries reviewed by Amnesty International, France is the only one with enshrined bans on religious headwear in national legislation or individual sports regulations.

By banning the hijab, the country hosting the Olympic Games is in breach of multiple obligations under international rights treaties to which it is a party, including both conventions on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and all forms of racial discrimination, as well as commitments outlined in the IOC’s own human rights framework, Amnesty stressed.

For instance, the Olympic Charter states: “The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the opportunity to practise sport without discrimination of any kind.”

The Olympic Host Contract further includes a condition that the host country must “protect and respect human rights and ensure that any violation of human rights is remedied”.

France’s ban on sports headgear also contradicts the clothing rules of international sports bodies such as FIFA (international football federation), FIBA (international basketball federation) and FIVB (international volleyball federation).

‘Devasting impacts’

“Banning French athletes from competing with sports hijabs at the Olympic and Paralympic Games makes a mockery of claims that Paris 2024 is the first Gender Equal Olympics and lays bare the racist gender discrimination that underpins access to sport in France,” declared Anna Blus, an Amnesty International researcher, upon releasing the report.

Despite repeated demands, the IOC has refused to call on French authorities to revoke the ban.

On 11 June, a coalition of organisations – including the Sport and Rights Alliance, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Transparency International and Basket Pour Toutes – published a letter addressed to the IOC, demanding that the body publicly call on French sporting authorities to overturn its ban on athletes wearing the hijab, including at Paris 2024.

The IOC replied that France’s prohibition on sports hijabs was outside the remit of the Olympic movement, stating that “freedom of religion is interpreted in many different ways by different states”.

In their letter, the rights groups explained that the ban has negative repercussions for many Muslim athletes “who have been discriminated against, made invisible, excluded and humiliated”.

“They suffered trauma and social exclusion. Some have left the country or considered doing so in order to find opportunities to practise their sport elsewhere.”

This ban means that many Muslim women never get the necessary training and competition opportunities to reach the highest levels of their respective sports.

“Preventing Muslim women and girls from fully and freely participating in sports, for leisure and recreation or as a career, can have devastating impacts on all aspects of their lives, including on their mental and physical health,” Amnesty said in its report.

The NGO spoke to Helene Ba, a basketball player who has not been allowed to compete since last October: “Mentally, it is also hard because you really feel excluded. Especially if you go to the bench and the referee tells you to go to the ladders [stands]. Everyone sees you… It is a walk of shame.”

Another woman, identified as B, told Amnesty International: “It is sad. It is even shameful to be, at this point in 2024, to block dreams just because of a piece of fabric.”

“It is a shame because we may be losing quality athletes,” a coach in Paris told Amnesty International, while sociologist Haifa Tlili spoke of a “violent” and “conscious” racism.

“They want to make this population invisible, to their detriment,” Tlili said in the report.

Another woman, Faiza, who practises various sports, shared this view, denouncing the “hypocrisy” of celebrating progress in gender equality while discriminating against Muslim women.

“So we are invisible. We do not count among the women because you have excluded us from the get-go. We cannot even practice the sport that we want to,” she told Amnesty.

Weaponising secular concepts

Activists and rights groups have long expressed concern that the intense focus on the hijab and Muslim women’s clothing in general in France – often under the guise of laicite, a form of secularism that bans religious symbols within state institutions – is a symptom of normalised Islamophobia.

Amnesty stated that, under international law, state neutrality or secularism is not a legitimate reason to impose restrictions on freedom of expression and religion.

“And yet, for several years, French authorities have been weaponising these concepts to justify the enactment of laws and policies that disproportionately impact Muslim women and girls… fuelled by prejudice, racism and gendered Islamophobia,” the organisation added.

In France, public servants are banned from wearing religious symbols at work, and Muslim teenagers are prohibited from wearing the hijab in schools. Last September, the government also banned the abaya dress in public educational institutions.

“No policymaker should dictate what a woman can or cannot wear, and no woman should be forced to choose between the sport she loves and her faith, cultural identity, or beliefs,” Amnesty’s Anna Blus concluded.

Source: Middle East Eye