Council of Europe withdraws hijab campaign after French backlash

It was online for only a few days. The short-lived campaign of the Council of Europe showed a split image of two women. One is wearing a hijab and the other is not. Alongside the image, a slogan reads “Beauty is in diversity as freedom is in hijab”.

The, according to commercial broadcaster LCI, partly EU-financed campaign, annoyed the French government. Sarah el Haïry, who is the Secretary of State for Youth, told LCI that France had "expressed its extremely strong disapproval".

Gabriel Attal, who is Secretary of State for the Prime Minister and a Government Spokesperson, was also not happy with the campaign. "We can consider that this campaign was made in spite of common sense, because religious freedom should not be confused with the promotion of a religious symbol", said Attal to LCI.

According to the Council of Europe, the campaign aims to promote diversity and integration. It should combat hatred and agitation. El Haïry, however, sees it as an encouragement to wear a headscarf as part of identity politics. “This position is diametrically opposed to the freedom of belief that France defends in all international spheres”, she wrote on Twitter.

The Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote that, according to a spokesman for the EU Commission, the European Union has funded the project against hate speech with 340,000 euros. The individual pictures were not discussed.

The Council of Europe, located in the French city of Strasbourg, is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. It has 47 member states and is not a body of the European Union.