Emmanuel Macron
French athletes will not be allowed to wear the hijab at the Olympic Games in Paris. France has enforced the ban on its national team players as it prepares to host the Games from July 26 to August 11 and the Paralympics from August 28 to September 8.
French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera first announced the ban on September 24, 2023. A few days later, Oudea-Castera, a guest on the French political show stated that no lady from her country’s delegation would wear a headscarf at the Paris Olympics.
Following the announcement of the ban, Marta Hurtado, the spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said in a statement on September 26 that the ban was not right.
“No one should impose on a woman what she needs to wear or not wear,” Hurtado said.
Amnesty International and several other organizations banded together to submit a letter regarding the ban to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the organization in charge of organizing the Olympic Games.
It urged the International Olympic Committee to issue a public plea to French sports officials to eliminate all bans on French athletes wearing headscarves at the Paris Olympic Games and all athletic activities.
Amnesty International claimed that the IOC responded insufficiently to the joint letter. In response, the IOC stated that France’s headscarf ban fell outside the committee’s jurisdiction and that “freedom of religion is interpreted in many different ways by different states.”
In a subsequent news release dated July 16, Amnesty International stated that the prohibition on headscarves reflects the country’s “discriminatory double standard” policy. It reaffirmed that the restriction on French athletes wearing veils at the Olympic Games breaches international human rights legislation.
