The United Nations Human Rights Committee have decided that the French ban on full-body veil violates the religious freedom of women.
The Human Rights Committee made this decision after reviewing two complaints filed by two French women in 2016.
The two women were fined in 2012 for wearing Niqab. A French law enacted in 2010 states that no one should wear any article of clothing which would conceal the face. This law prevents Muslim women from wearing the face-veil.
The Human Rights Committee with 18 independent experts from around the world states that the right to practice one’s religion includes the wearing of distinctive clothing and head covering. They noted that even though this law prohibits covering of face, it is still allowed in artistic expressions and in sports. So it unfairly targets the use in religious context.
The experts also concluded that the ban, rather than protecting fully veiled women, could have the effect of confining them to their homes, impeding their access to public services and marginalizing them.
The Committee acknowledged that Governments’ law enforcement entities must be able “in some circumstances” to demand that individuals show their faces, meaning they would have to uncover them in specific and “concrete situations”, where public security was at stake, or for formal identification purposes.
The decision of the Committee is however not legally binding, and it is not clear how the French government will react. Decisions of the Human Rights Committee are largely ignored by powerful states.
French ban on full-body veil violates religious freedom : UN HR Committee
