UK asks France to revise its law banning the sails of protection against human rights

The UN Human Rights Committee ruled on Tuesday that French law banning the veil on the face was a violation of human rights. Two women, fined in 2012 for wearing a full veil called a niqab, brought the case to the entity in 2016.

"The Committee considered that the general criminal prohibition of the wearing of the niqab in public, introduced by French law, disproportionately affected the applicants' right to manifest their religious beliefs and that France had not adequately explained the need to ban this garment, "a statement from the committee said.

"Rather than protecting fully veiled women, [the ban] to have the opposite effect of confining them to their homes, to prevent them from accessing public services and to marginalize them, "the statement added.

According to the decision, France will now have 180 days to compensate the two women who lodged a complaint and report to the committee on "measures taken to prevent similar violations in the future, including by revising the law in question" .

On January 9, 2014, a woman wearing the niqab, a sort of full-face veil, walks down a street in the center of Roubaix, France. The UN Human Rights Committee stated that France's ban on the facial veil was a violation of human rights. Philippe Huguen / AFP / Getty

Moreover, a spokesman for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs defended the ban, saying that covering the face was "incompatible with the principle of brotherhood and the fundamental values ​​of a democratic and open society", according to Agence France-Presse. The spokesman added that previous decisions of the French Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights had declared that the law did not violate freedom of religion.

France passed the law in 2010 and began enforcing it in 2011. Under the law, people who wear a facial veil in public can be fined up to $ 172.

"The government is preparing measures to inform the citizens, necessary for the law to be properly applied, especially to attract the attention of people who undermine the founding principles of our democracy by extreme behavior," said l & # 39, former French Prime Minister François Fillon after the Constitutional Council of the country. approved the law. He stressed that it was "an important decision to assert the values ​​of the Republic in respect of freedom of conscience and religion," reported the l & # 39; France Media Agency.

In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights held that the ban did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights as a result of the allegation of a Muslim woman that the law prevented her from living according to her religion, culture and personal beliefs.

France has become the first country in Europe to adopt such a ban. Several other countries, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Netherlands and parts of Switzerland have enacted similar laws.