Sport events, especially when they are of a global scale, have
been facing more and more questions about their impact on local
communities, the environment, and human rights.
It has become clear that their social legitimacy is not a
given, but must be earned by showing that sport events can positively
contribute to society. During this half-day conference, we will debate
the proposal of a European Social Charter for Sport Events in order to
achieve this goal.
In January 2021, a consortium of eight partners launched a
three-year project, supported by the European Commission under the
Erasmus+ scheme, aimed at devising a European Social Charter for Sport
Events (ESCSE). The project ambitions to develop a Charter which will
contribute to ensuring that sport events taking place in the European
Union are socially beneficial to the local communities concerned and,
more generally, to those affected by them. The project is directly
inspired by the decision of the Paris 2024 bid to commit to a social
charter enforced throughout the preparation and the course of the 2024
Olympics.
This first public event in the framework of the ESCSE project,
will be introducing the project to a wider public. During the event we
will review the current state of the implementation of the Paris 2024
Social Charter, discuss the expectations of stakeholders and academics
for a European Social Charter and present for feedback the first draft
of the ESCSE (and its implementing guidelines) developed by the project
members. It will be a participatory event; we welcome input from the
participants.
The Asser International Sports Law Centre, powered by the Asser
Institute, is contributing to the project through the drafting of a
background study, which we will introduce during the conference.
Please note that we can
provide some financial support (up to 100 euros) towards travel
and/or accommodation costs for a limited number of participants
coming from other EU Member States or the UK. To apply for this
financial support please reach out to ConferenceManager@asser.nl. `
Register HERE
Editor’s note:
Tomáš Grell holds an LL.M.
in Public International Law from Leiden University. He contributes to
the work of the ASSER International Sports Law Centre as a research
intern.
Concerns about adverse
human rights impacts related to FIFA's activities have intensified ever since its
late 2010 decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup to Russia and Qatar
respectively. However, until recently, the world's governing body of football
had done little to eliminate these concerns, thereby encouraging human rights
advocates to exercise their critical eye on FIFA.
In response to growing
criticism, the Extraordinary FIFA Congress, held in February 2016, decided to include an explicit
human rights commitment in the revised FIFA Statutes which came into force in April 2016. This commitment
is encapsulated in Article 3 which reads as follows: ''FIFA is committed to respecting all internationally recognized human
rights and shall strive to promote the protection of these rights''. At
around the same time, Professor John Ruggie, the author of the United Nations Guiding
Principles on Business and Human Rights ('UN Guiding
Principles') presented in his report 25 specific recommendations for FIFA on how to
further embed respect for human rights across its global operations. While
praising the decision to make a human rights commitment part of the
organization's constituent document, Ruggie concluded that ''FIFA does not have yet adequate systems in
place enabling it to know and show that it respects human rights in practice''.[1]
With the 2018 World Cup
in Russia less than a year away, the time is ripe to look at whether Ruggie's
statement about FIFA's inability to respect human rights still holds true
today. This blog outlines the most salient human rights risks related to FIFA's
activities and offers a general overview of what the world's governing body of
football did over the past twelve months to mitigate these risks. Information
about FIFA's human rights activities is collected primarily from its Activity Update on Human Rights published alongside FIFA's Human Rights Policy in June 2017. More...