On April 9th, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment concerning Belgium’s Hijab (Headscarf) ban on wearing visible religious symbols in Schools. The Court, following its previous notorious trial of SAS v. France, continued to allow the creeping erosion of the right to manifest religion under Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights (‘ECHR’) by deferring to the State’s margin of appreciation. This decision in the Mikyas case, involving three Muslim women who wear the Islamic veil and attend secondary schools in the Flemish Community's official education system, has once again raised concerns about the Court's approach to religious freedom and its failure to adequately address issues of indirect discrimination, intersectionality, and the right to education in the context of religious expression.
Freedom of Religion
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Animal Welfare Beats Freedom of Religion
Sien Devriendt and Carla M. Zoethout have recently presented, in this blog, the ECtHR judgment of 13 February 2024 in Executief van de Moslims van België et al. v. Belgium (16760/22 et al.), welcoming the change in ethical thinking regarding animal welfare reflected in that judgment. In this post, which is based on a comment forthcoming, in…
The UN Human Rights Committee Disagrees with the European Court of Human Rights Again: The Right to Manifest Religion by Wearing a Burqa
It is perhaps unsurprising to observers of the UN Human Rights Committee’s (HRC) jurisprudence that in the recent decisions of Yaker v France and Hebbadi v France, the HRC came to the opposite conclusion to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) regarding the compatibility of the so-called ‘French burqa ban’ with the right to manifest religion.
Legitimizing Blasphemy Laws Through the Backdoor: The European Court’s Judgment in E.S. v. Austria
This past weekend Irish voters decided, by an overwhelming majority, to amend the Irish Constitution so as to decriminalize blasphemy. Just a few days before this referendum, however, a unanimous Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights gave its blessing to the criminalization of blasphemy, in all but name, in its judgment in E.S. v. Austria,…
De-humanisation? CJEU, Liga van Moskeeën en islamitische Organisaties Provincie Antwerpen on Religious Slaughter
Introduction In Case C-426/16, Liga van Moskeeën en islamitische Organisaties Provincie Antwerpen et al v. Vlaams Gewest, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Grand Chamber) in its judgment of 29th May 2018 decided that the EU law provision allowing religious slaughter without stunning the animal only in slaughterhouses (Art. 4(4) of Regulation…
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