Europe’s highest human rights court has ruled in favor of double Olympic 800-meter champion Caster Semenya, finding that courts in Switzerland should allow the South African runner to challenge regulations which oblige female athletes with naturally high testosterone levels to take drugs to lower them.
Semenya, 32, took her case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg after losing an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which had ruled in 2019 that World Athletics’ regulations on testosterone levels were necessary for fair female competition.
A subsequent appeal to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court was also thrown out.
What has the European Court of Human Rights found?
The ECHR, however, found on Tuesday that Semenya’s original appeal against World Athletics had not been adequately heard and that the athlete had been discriminated against.
“The Court found in particular that the applicant had not been afforded sufficient institutional and procedural safeguards in Switzerland to allow her to have her complaints examined effectively,” the ECHR said in a statement, referring to the “high stakes of the case of the applicant” after ruling by a slender majority of four votes to three.
Who is Caster Semenya?
Semenya, a three-time 800 meters world champion who also won gold in the event at the 2016 Olympics, has a medical condition known as hyperandrogenism which is characterized by above-average levels of testosterone, a hormone which increases muscle mass, strength and endurance, and which is found in greater quantities in male bodies.
Under World Athletics rules, athletes with “differences in sexual development” (DSDs) resulting in high testosterone levels must take action to lower them to the level of “a healthy woman with ovaries,” either by taking contraceptive pills, having monthly injections or undergoing surgery to remove testes if necessary.
Semenya, whose career has been put on hold during the ongoing legal process, has argued that the rules are discriminatory and that contraceptive pills make her feel “constantly sick.”
Entering her appeal, she had said: “All we ask is to be allowed to run free, for once and for all, as the strong and fearless women we are and always have been.”
Human Rights Watch has previously called World Athletics’ regulations “inherently subjective and degrading,” claiming that they have also disproportionately affected women from the global south.
Semenya: what happens next?
But the governing body is sticking by its rules for now, insisting they are aimed at ensuring a level playing field for all athletes, saying: “We remain of the view that the DSD regulations are a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of protecting fair competition in the female category.”
Tuesday’s ECHR ruling does not call into question or overturn World Athletics’ regulations, nor will it enable an immediate return to competition for Semenya.
But it will enable her to return to court in Switzerland and resume legal proceedings.
mf/jt (Reuters, AFP, SID)
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