"It is essential that the IOC wakes up to the human rights impact of its events - and lives up to the expectations created around Agenda 2020" - Eduard Nazarski
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has failed to include an explicit requirement to respect and protect human rights in the Host City Contract for the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics published last week, a move the Sport and Rights Alliance (SRA) has described as an ‘astonishing’ omission.
Eduard Nazarski, director of Amnesty International Netherlands – a partner in the SRA along with Transparency International Germany, the International Trade Union Confederation, Football Supporters Europe and Terre des Hommes – said:
"From the crackdown on protests and press freedom in Beijing 2008 and restrictions on gay rights and free speech around Sochi 2014, to heightened repression in Azerbaijan ahead of the European Games in Baku this summer and the thousands forcibly evicted in Rio to make way for infrastructure for next year’s Olympics, there is no denying that Olympic Games can and do lead to human rights abuses.
"The IOC knows this, which makes the omission of explicit references to human rights from the new Host City Contract even more astonishing. It is essential that the IOC wakes up to the human rights impact of its events, and lives up to the expectations created around Agenda 2020. The Olympic charter states that sport is a human right, but when the staging of Olympic events falls short on protecting human rights, that claim rings increasingly hollow."
"Research has shown that mega sporting events in Brazil had four main implications on children’s lives: increase of police and army violence, displacement, sexual exploitation and child labour. The omission of human rights in the Host City Contract shows little intention for change." said Ignacio Parker, Secretary General of Terre des Hommes."
The Host City Contract and several accompanying documents for the 2024 Olympics were launched on 16 September alongside the names of the bidding cities: Budapest, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome. It is the first new Host City Contract since the publication of Agenda 2020 last year, the IOC’s plan for the future of the Olympic Movement, which it claimed would promote Olympic values of non-discrimination, friendship, solidarity and fair play.
The new contract prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation – a clause introduced after Sochi 2014 – and includes requirements to allow the media to report freely on the Games and for the building of infrastructure for the event to comply with international labour standards.
However, none of these changes go far enough, said the SRA. To avoid a repeat of human rights abuses linked to a number of recent Olympic events, the Host City Contract for 2024 and all future Olympic events must require cities to make an explicit commitment to human rights. This includes compliance with international human rights obligations, access to remedy, human rights due diligence and risk assessment, Host cities must also have in-house capacity to implement and monitor compliance with international human rights standards.
Requirements on labour and anti-corruption standards are also severely lacking in detail. While host cities are required to comply with labour and anti-corruption laws in ‘all venue construction and infrastructure development projects’, no guarantees are required on merchandising or the supply chain.
Sylvia Schenk from Transparency International Germany added:
"Good Governance in sport as an overall concept is missing from the contract – anti-doping, for instance, is mentioned in the preamble but no anti-match-fixing. That gives the impression that for the IOC, corruption destroying the competition is less damaging than doping. The Organising Committee urgently needs a full compliance management system in place to meet international governance standards."
For more information, please contact:
Andrea Florence
Strategic Alliance Officer
31 Chemin Frank Thomas CH -1223 Cologny/Geneva (Switzerland)
Phone +41 61 335 91 56
www.terredeshommes.org
www.childrenwin.org
Follow us on Twitter: @ChildrenWin
Follow us on Facebook: @ChildrenWin
20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is www.aroundtherings.com, for subscribers only
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
