The French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra announced earlier this week that the country’s athletes will not wear the hijab during the Paris 2024 Games in line with the country’s regime of "strict secularism."

Asked about this statement during a regular press briefing in Geneva, Agence France-Presse reported that Marta Hurtado, the UN’s spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, replied: "In general, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights believes that no one should impose on a woman what she should or should not wear."

Hurtado said that the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women requires all parties to take "all appropriate measures necessary to modify any social or cultural model based on the idea of inferiority or superiority of one or the other sex.

But she added: "Under international human rights standards, restrictions on the expression of religions or beliefs, such as choice of clothing, are only acceptable in very specific circumstances that respond proportionately and necessary to legitimate concerns regarding public safety, public order, public health or morality."

Oudéa-Castéra confirmed the hosts’ stance on the subject during an interview with the French political show Dimanche en Politique.

"We have, thanks to a recent decision of the Council of State, expressed very clearly with the Prime Minister our attachment to a regime of strict secularism," she said.

"This means the prohibition of any form of proselytism, the absolute neutrality of public service.

"The representatives of our delegations in our French teams will not wear the veil."

Wearing the veil is set to remain banned during football matches in France, an approach that goes against a call from a collective of Muslim women, who call themselves "Les Hijabeuses."

FIFA allows players to wear the veil, with Morocco’s Nouhaila Benzina the first player wearing a veil to participate at a FIFA Women’s World Cup earlier this year.

"The International Olympic Committee, which governs these rules of participation, is following a logic which consists of understanding the wearing of the veil not as a religious factor but as a cultural factor," Oudéa-Castéra added.

"It is based on the provisions of International Federations which are not all the same in this area."

In 2019, French feminist group the International League for Women’s Rights called on Paris 2024 organisers to ban the veil and other items of Islamic clothing during the Olympics and Paralympics.

Last month France banned the wearing of the abaya dress by girls at schools, while Muslim women are already banned from wearing the veil in public institutions such as Government offices, schools and universities.