Posted by ccld201
6 March 2026Despite its centrality to human rights, human dignity is an unclear and contested concept. It can be understood as ‘the freedom to be and become the person one chooses, which happens in and through a social context’. In this description, Jill Marshall proposes an empowerment understanding of human dignity, in which people can navigate their social worlds with relative autonomy, and the rich diversity of people who make up our communities have the freedom to be the people they choose to be. This perspective on human dignity underpins the idea of a pluralist, multi-cultural society, and the concept of ‘living together’. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has often made reference to human dignity; their understanding of human dignity at points reflecting this ‘empowerment understanding’.[1] However, the ECtHR appears at odds with this understanding in cases concerning Muslim women wearing the full-face veil. No case represents this more clearly than S.A.S. v France decided on 2014.
In October 2010, France enacted Law no. 2010-1192 of 11 October 2010 “prohibiting the concealment of one’s face in public places”. In April 2011, a French woman who wore the burqa and niqab brought an application before the ECtHR, claiming that the October 2010 law violated her rights under Articles, 3, 8, 9, 10 and 11, separately and in conjunction with Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The Court found there had been no violation of the Convention in this case. S.A.S. v France has dogged the Court since its judgment over ten years ago. It has been expertly explored in numerous articles (see for example the work cited in this blog among others), in terms of its understanding of Muslim women, gender equality and its treatment of religious minorities. This blog reflects on the tensions raised in this case around the State’s legitimate aim of ‘living together’, the empowerment understanding of human dignity and the pluralism that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is expected to enshrine.
S.A.S. v France remains a controversial case for the ECtHR in large part because of the Court’s apparent prioritising of a ‘white’, ‘secular’, ‘majority’ view of Muslim women as oppressed and subversive, and as a threat to young minds and to the secular principles of the modern European democratic state. This view of the ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ in S.A.S. v France seems incompatible with the empowerment understanding of human dignity. Among their arguments before the Court, France claimed that ‘the ban … was a matter of respect for human dignity, since the women who wore such clothing were therefore “effaced” from the public space. In their view, this was ‘necessarily dehumanising and could hardly be regarded as consistent with human dignity’ [82]. This position echoes the report that was part of the legislative process, claiming that the full-face veil was ‘an infringement of the principle of liberty’ and thus at odds with the values of the French Republic, that it was a form of subservience that could not be reconciled with ‘the equal dignity of human beings’ [17]. The State argued that this law was an effort to protect human dignity (under the legitimate aim of protecting the rights and freedoms of others) and therefore constituted a justified interference with the applicant’s rights under Articles 8, 9, 10 and 14.
The claim that the law protected dignity was countered by the applicant, who argued that the State’s case developed from a stereotyping assumption that women who wore veils were ‘effaced’ [77], and that this had the effect of dismissing the agency of these women and ignoring their own motivations [78]. The ECtHR, dismissing the State’s claim that the ban was justified by respect for human dignity, held the following:
‘The Court takes the view that, however essential it may be, respect for human dignity cannot legitimately justify a blanket ban on the wearing of the full-face veil in public places. The Court is aware that the clothing in question is perceived as strange by many of those who observe it. It would point out, however, that it is the expression of a cultural identity which contributes to the pluralism that is inherent in democracy. It notes in this connection the variability of the notions of virtuousness and decency that are applied to the uncovering of the human body. Moreover, it does not have any evidence capable of leading it to consider that women who wear the full-face veil seek to express a form of contempt against those they encounter or otherwise to offend against the dignity of others’. (para 120)
The ECtHR thus recognised the decision to wear the full-face veil as an expression of the woman’s free will, rather than a symbol of subservience. This aligns with the empowerment understanding of human dignity. Quoting Heri, ‘If we understand dignity as Hannah Arendt’s right to have rights, then this is a right to be an equally valued member of a moral and political community…. or as a safeguard against domination and a right to co-determine the conditions of one’s life’. This has been the ECtHR’s approach in other cases, and in their rejection of France’s human dignity argument, they appeared to remain consistent with that approach.
However, in finding no violation of the applicant’s rights in S.A.S. v France, the Court seems to reinforce the view of the ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ that aligns with the State’s human dignity argument and undermines a view of Muslim women as empowered actors taking their space in a pluralist society. Saba Mahmood encourages us to understand pious Muslim women on their own terms, to break apart the ‘normative liberal assumptions about freedom and agency’. The Court does not centre the experience of the applicant in S.A.S. v France. Instead, the Court ignores her voice and the voices of many Muslim women who describe this and similar bans as violations of their autonomy and human dignity. Moreover, they ignore the diversity that exists in how Islam is practised, and the specific conditions of Muslim communities in Europe.
Ambiguous fears about the risks that Muslim women pose have had demonstrable negative consequences on Muslim women’s participation in the public sphere in France. A study by two researchers in Stanford University found that the 2004 ban on hijabs in public schools had a clear, negative impact on young Muslim women’s educational attainment. The fears that fuelled Law no. 2010-1192 of 11 October 2010 have not dispelled. Since the enactment of the ban in 2010, we have seen similar bans elsewhere in Europe.[2] The outrage at Muslim dress continues unabated in France, the fear of the ‘separatism’ of the Muslim community in France now joined by a fear of ‘entryism’.
Diallo in the quote above underscores an inconsistency that sits at the heart of the S.A.S. v France judgment. It is paradoxical to recognise an empowerment understanding of human dignity, and at the same time fail to recognise that in a democratic pluralist society, everyone has equal dignity and an equal right to be an empowered member of society. It is hoped that the ECtHR can resolve this inconsistency in future cases.
Caer Smyth is an interdisciplinary legal researcher who employs socio-legal research methodologies to explore problems of environmental law and procedural environmental justice. Her recent work looks at public participation in environmental decision-making, and at the Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015. She is a trustee of the SLSA, a board member of the Centre of Law and Society at Cardiff and a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Law and Society. Caer is co-convenor of the Human Rights Law module in Cardiff.
[1] See e.g. Pretty v UK 2002 (Application no. 2346/02); Goodwin v UK 2002 (Application no. 28957/95); Cossey v UK 1990 (Application no. 10843/84), Dissenting Opinion of Judge Martens.
[2] (Dakir v Belgium Application No 4619/12, Merits and Just Satisfaction, 11 July 2017; Belcacemi and Oussar v Belgium Application No 37798/13, Merits and Just Satisfaction, 11 July 2017, English translation in 37 Neve Zeitschrift fr Verwaltungsrecht 1037