PARIS: French athletes have been banned from wearing the hijab, or Muslim headscarf, at the Paris Olympics.
French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera initially announced the ban on 24 September 2023.
A few days later, Oudea-Castera, who was a guest on the French political program Dimanche en Politique, confirmed that no woman in her country’s delegation would wear a headscarf during the Paris Olympics.
Following the announcement of the ban, Marta Hurtado, a spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said in a statement on September 26 that the ban was not correct.
“No one should dictate to a woman what she has to wear or not,” Hurtado said.
“Discriminatory Double Standard”
On May 24 this year, Amnesty International and several other organizations came together to send a letter of ban to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the organization responsible for organizing the Olympic Games.
He called on the IOC to publicly call on sports authorities in France to lift all restrictions on French athletes wearing the headscarf, both at the Paris Olympics and at all sporting events.
Amnesty International said the IOC’s response to the joint letter was insufficient.
In its response, the IOC said that France’s headscarf ban did not fall within the committee’s remit and that “freedom of religion is interpreted in many different ways by different states”.
Subsequently, in a July 16 press release, Amnesty International said that the headscarf ban demonstrated the existence of a “discriminatory double standard” policy in the country. She reiterated that the ban on the participation of veiled French athletes in the Olympic Games violates international human rights law.
