UN Committee Rules Schools In France For Violating Civil Rights Treaty For Banning Hijab

JAKARTA - A United Nations committee has ruled that a school in France violates an international rights treaty by banning a Muslim woman from wearing a headscarf while participating in activities there.

According to the UN Human Rights Committee, the move violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

His decision follows a complaint filed in 2016 by a French citizen born in 1977, whose lawyer did not want his name published.

The woman took a professional training course for adults in 2010, having passed an interview and an entrance test, Daily Sabah quoted AFP from Aug. 4 as saying.

But the principal of Langevin Wallon High School in the southeastern suburbs of Paris refused to let him in because of a ban on wearing religious symbols in public educational institutions.

The UN committee said "forbidding her to participate in continuing education courses while wearing a headscarf, is a restriction on religious freedom in violation of the treaty."

The committee's decision was adopted in March but sent to the woman's lawyer on Wednesday.

"This is an important decision that shows that France has work to do in terms of human rights and in particular on the issue of respect for religious minorities, and more specifically the Muslim community," his lawyer, Sefen Guez Guez told AFP.