Yolanda Alba, journalist. Ligue du Droit International des Femmes (LIDF) and president of the Forum Femmes Journalistes Méditerranée (FFJM).
When I started working in France with LIDF, I was surprised that one of the main issues of the political struggle was the Human Rights of women in sport and the related issue of sexual apartheid in countries with Islamist religious governments, certainly in view of the 2024 Olympic Games. Let us not forget that the Paris bid was supported by more than 50 metropolises from all over the world, saying: (Paris) “has the assets and the will to give new life to Olympic values”.
It is true that throughout history patriarchy has been characterized by the appropriation of women’s bodies, assigning them to us in private space. As Annie Sugier, our president of the LIDF, cleverly repeats, sport is a factor of emancipation insofar as it breaks this logic by mobilizing our bodies in the public space. Another advantage of modern sport is the obligation to respect the technical and ethical rules implemented by a powerful pyramidal organization, with the International Olympic Committee and the International Federations at the top.
Thus, the Olympic Charter establishes fundamental ethical principles that are universal. Among them, non-discrimination based on sex (principle 6); and political, religious and racial neutrality (rule 50.2). The obligation of neutrality is more demanding than the French law of secularism, because it applies in public spaces to both supervisory personnel and athletes (no political, religious or racial manifestation or propaganda of any kind is allowed in an Olympic venue).
At the origin of this obligation is the notion of the Olympic Truce, which dates back to the 9th century B.C.E. (Before Common Era), when the warring city-states suspended hostilities during the Games. It should be recalled that, at the initiative of the IOC, this notion is taken up by the UN each Olympic year. However, the explicit promulgation of this rule did not take place until 1976 after events that had tarnished the serenity of the Games, the most serious being the attack perpetrated by the Black September commando against the Israeli team in 1972.
Likewise, IOC President Thomas Bach, never misses an opportunity to underline the importance of Rule 50. In his New Year 2020 message, he recalled that: “The Olympic Games are and remain a global platform reserved for athletes and their sporting performances. They are not, and should never be, a platform that achieves political ends or that can be a potential source of discord”. But as feminist women we believe that “the fight against Islamist radicalization is, first and foremost, a battle for values and a model of society, where the place of women and gender diversity are central to the fight against Islamist radicalization”, according to Annie Sugier. And in this regard, we demand that the organizers of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games work with the IOC to ensure that the IOC sanctions those countries that still impose sexual apartheid on women, as it did in South Africa under the racial apartheid regime..
The LDIF had made a remarkable breakthrough in the Olympic world during the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. While the world press rejoiced at the return of the South African delegation after 30 years of exclusion due to apartheid, no one noticed the absence of women in 35 delegations. Questioning the IOC, the LDIF dared to call this situation “sexual apartheid”, demanding the exclusion of the countries concerned. From Olympiad to Olympiad, LDIF’s interventions bore fruit, and the number of delegations without women continued to decrease. Finally, in 2012, at the London Olympics, all delegations included women! It was a bitter victory, because in return the IOC had accepted the discriminatory conditions imposed by the Islamist theocracies on women’s participation in the Games: bodies covered from head to toe, participation only in single-sex competitions compatible with the Coran.
While universality for men is accepted without reservation, the conditions established and accepted by the IOC are tantamount to admitting the cohabitation, in the Olympic stadium, of two models for the development of women’s sport: a model based on sporting criteria and a model based on political-religious criteria. These violations of the Charter are the result of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s proselytism in favor of an Islamist female sports model. The declared objective is to avoid the corruption that could arise from the simultaneous presence of men and women in the same space. Hence a double strategy: to organize separate Games for women in Tehran every 4 years -with the backing of the IOC- and, at the same time, to put pressure on the Women and Sport networks to obtain their support so that veiled women can participate in official international competitions. So, does universality in sport only apply to men?
The year 2008 marked a turning point with the publication of the Accept and Respect Declaration, drawn up with the International Network of Women and Sport, composed of representatives from more than 40 countries, and addressed to the International Sports Federations in the following terms: “We urge international sports federations to demonstrate their commitment to integration by ensuring that their dress code for competitions complies with Muslim requirements, taking into account the principles of propriety, safety and integrity”. The International Sports Federations will give in one after another and finally in 2015, it is the turn of UNESCO, which will revise its 1978 Charter of Physical Education, Physical Activity and Sport, where the beautiful phrase “sport, universal language par excellence” disappears, and Article 1.3 stipulates that: all human beings, including preschool children, women and girls, older persons, persons with disabilities and indigenous peoples, should be offered inclusive and responsive opportunities without risk to participate in physical education, physical activity and sport. In short, women as a whole are relegated to the vulnerable category. As Sugier argues, the notion of inclusion replaces the notion of universality of rights.
Broadening the struggle to recognize the notion of sexual apartheid
Secularism suffers from several handicaps in the international sporting context at hand: first, it is considered a French specificity, whereas sport is governed by international rules. The second handicap is that, strictly according to the terms of the 1905 law, the separation of Church and State essentially concerns the agents of the State, and not the general public, nor the public space. However, we note with satisfaction this year’s decision of the Council of State in the case of hijabs, which extends the application of secularism to players in competition: therefore, there will be no veiled athletes in the French delegation at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games!
It is clear that it is not enough to invoke l secularism to put an end to religious interference in the sporting space. This is why we advocate an appeal to the United Nations human rights bodies. The objective is to extend the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid to the case of sexual apartheid. This convention is particularly effective in that it prohibits signatory states, on pain of being considered accomplices, from collaborating with the state in question, which thus becomes a kind of pariah state (it should be noted that one of the repercussions of the text on racial apartheid was the vote in 1985 for a convention against apartheid in sport, to which the IOC referred in order to exclude South Africa from competitions).
Given and demonstrated violence against women in Iran and Afghanistan, high-level international experts are already calling for the extension of the 1973 Convention. It is still necessary that some country in our environment has the courage to present this request to the General Assembly of the United Nations.
