User:Jillrobins/sandbox

On 23 October 2018, the United Nations Human Rights Committee published a statement coming down against France for human rights violations. The committee was responding to two complaints about women being prosecuted for wearing clothing that violated the French ban of the niqab. This was a landmark case for the UN Human Rights Committee seeing as it was the first case by the committee to address the Islamic veil. The committee concluded that France had not provided a strong enough reason for their ban of face-veiling. France had initially argued that it was a necessary law in order for their community to better coexist and live in harmony. The UN committee disagreed with this reasoning. Further, the UN committee believed that the ban would strip away the rights of veiled women by ostracizing them from French community. Following the UN statement, France has 180 days to respond with what steps they are taking to change their law. However, it appears little has been done in reparation.

Since then, the French Senate has proposed a ban on mothers wearing headscarves when accompanying their children on school field trips. Jean-Michel Blanquer came out in staunch opposition to a pamphlet produced by a French parents association for including the photo of a mother wearing a headscarf. Blanquer has also expressed that the heads of schools should discourage the inclusion of mothers who choose to wear the headscarf, invoking the argument of France's strong secularism. The ban was approved by French parliament's upper house but rejected in the lower house in May of 2019.