The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on 17 November 2023 that banning students from wearing religious symbols in schools does not infringe their religious freedom.
The case began in 2009, when the Flemish community decided to extend to the entire network of schools the ban on visible religious symbols to students. At the time, the three Belgian women attended public secondary school.
Initially, the girls’ parents appealed to the Belgian courts, asking that the headscarf ban be declared illegal. But they claimed, the measure goes once morest the freedom of religion. Ultimately their request was denied.
In November 2020, they filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights.
“The neutrality of education does not affect religious freedom”
Before the Strasbourg Court, the three Belgian women, who are now 20 years old, argued that this ban violates their rights as guaranteed by articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life), 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religious freedom), 10 (on freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as from Article 2 of Protocol 1 (right to education) and Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination).
The Court ruled that “the idea of the neutrality of education (…) understood as a prohibition, in a universal way, of the use of visible religious symbols by students does not affect religious freedom as such”.
The Court notes that the ban appealed once morest by the three Muslim women does not exclusively concern the Islamic headscarf, but any religious symbol, and that the applicants had been informed in advance of the applicable rules at the specific schools and had agreed to comply with them.
The matter of religious symbols had already been decided
The Court of Strasbourg has already ruled on the issue of religious symbols in school.
According to protothema, in 2009 it had rejected the appeal once morest France of six students who were excluded from their schools for wearing visible religious symbols, the Islamic headscarf and the “keski” worn under the turban by Sikhs.
The Court had ruled that the ban was not directed once morest the religious identity of the children, but served the legitimate purpose of protecting the rights and freedoms of others and public order.
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