Sport is often presented by Sports Governing Bodies (SGBs), and in particular the International Olympic Committee, as apolitical. A neutral endeavor, which ignores the whims of politics and keeps national governments at arm’s length. In short, it is thought of as an autonomous sphere of transnational society wishing to remain unaffected by the political turbulences out there. In fact, many SGBs enforce strict rules banning political speech by individuals, and in the spaces, subjected to their contractual power. Moreover, FIFA, for example, regularly issues effective sanctions against states which are perceived as threatening the autonomy of the governance of football on their territory. Hence, this apolitical ideal of international sports is not only a founding myth of the Olympic Movement, it is actively pursued by SGBs through their private regulatory powers and has hard consequences for athletes, clubs, sport officials alike.

Yet, on 24 February, Russia decided to invade Ukraine, in what has become the most important land war in Europe since the implosion of ex-Yugoslavia. This invasion was quickly followed by condemnations from the IOC and many other SGBs, leading in many cases, most prominently by UEFA and FIFA, to the exclusion of Russian teams and athletes from international sporting competitions. This reaction is difficult to square with the neutrality and autonomy of sport so vigorously defended by the international SGBs until recently. It raises also many questions of double standards: why did this illegal invasion lead to sporting consequences and not others? Furthermore, the Court of Arbitration of Sport recently released two orders (available here and here) concerning UEFA and FIFA’s decisions to exclude Russian national teams and clubs from their football competitions, which outline the legal strategies pursued by the SGBs to reconcile the public urge to exclude Russia(ns) from international sporting competitions, and their commitments to political neutrality.

We are very happy to welcome three outstanding scholars to discuss these issues with us from different methodological perspectives.

Speakers:

• Prof. Carmen Pérez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), who wrote a blog on the reactions of SGBs to Russia’s invasion
• Dr. Daniela Heerdt (Asser Institute and Centre for Sports and Human Rights), who is the co-author of a blog mapping the reactions of SGBs to Russia’s invasion
• Carole Gomez (University of Lausanne and Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques), who has been interviewed numerous times by international media on the issue (see here and here)

Moderators:

• Dr. Marjolaine Viret (University of Lausanne)
• Dr. Antoine Duval (Asser Institute)

Register for free HERE!

On 25 and 26 October 2022, the Asser Institute in The Hague will host the 2022 edition of the International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ) Conference. The ISLJ is the leading academic journal in transnational sports law and governance and is proud to provide a platform for transnational debates on the state of the field. 2022 has put a number of complex issues and disputes on the top of the transnational sports law agenda, which will be at the heart of the conference.

Sports governing bodies react to Russia's invasion of Ukraine
First, Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February triggered a swift and decisive reaction by a wide range of international sports governing bodies (SGBs), leading in particular to the exclusion of Russian teams and athletes from many international sporting competitions, including most prominently the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar. These reactions have shown, once again, that sport is far from immune from the turbulences of international relations and raise the question of its alleged neutrality and apolitical nature. To engage with these issues, we have invited Prof. Jonathan Grix (Metropolitan Manchester University) to deliver a keynote speech and will dedicate a specific panel to discussing the intersection between transnational sports law and international law/relations.

Monopoly of sports governing bodies
Second, the organization of international sports is also currently threatened by challenges to the traditional monopoly position of international SGBs raised under EU antitrust law. Early July 2022, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union heard two crucial cases (International Skating Union and Superleague) concerning the compatibility of the rules of international SGBs aimed at sanctioning athletes and clubs who participate in unauthorized third-party competitions. Dr. Van Rompuy (Leiden University), the driving force behind the ISU case, will be discussing with us the potential impact of competition law on the governance of sport and what to expect from the pending decisions of the CJEU. Additionally, we will host two panels dedicated to the application of competition law to sports governance, both at an international and national level.

Human rights and mega-sporting events
Third, with both Beijing and Qatar hosting mega-sporting events this year, it is difficult to ignore the human rights issues raised by international sporting competitions. A fast-growing social movement aimed at urging the SGBs to abide by their human rights responsibilities has been developing around the activism of some NGOs and the creation of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights (CSHR). The CEO of the CSHR, Mary Harvey, will be joining us to share her thoughts on the role of sports lawyers and sports law academics in this discussion. Her intervention will be followed by a panel dedicated to the intersections between human rights and transnational sports law and governance.

Trans and queer participation in sporting competitions
Finally, the question of the participation of transgender athletes in sporting competitions has become an extremely contentious issue of debate in recent years, especially in the United States. Furthermore, International SGBs, such as FINA recently, have started to impose specific requirements to the participation of trans athlete in international competitions. Our closing panel will take a fresh look at this question by foregrounding the way in which trans and queer participation in sporting competitions has been accommodated in South Asia.

Online participation available
For the first time this year, we will allow online participation to the conference for an affordable price. Our aim is to internationalise and diversify further our audience and to reach people who in light of the current challenges, be it Covid-19 or climate change, are not in a position to come in person to The Hague.

Programme
Download the full programme.

Register HERE! (Early Bird Registration is available only until 1 October, 23:59CET)

Editor’s note:Pedro is an intern at the Asser Institute and currently studying the Erasmus Mundus Master Degree in Sports Ethics and Integrity (KU Leuven et al.) He was one of the participants of the first edition of the Summer Programme on Sports Governance and Human Rights.

In early September, the first Summer Programme on the Governance of Sport and Human Rights took place at the Asser Institute. During one week, various experts in the field presented different lectures to a very diverse group of participants with a wide range of professional backgrounds. Being a participant myself, I would like to reflect on this one-week course and share what I learned. More...

Editor's Note: Pedro is an intern at the Asser Institute and currently studying the Erasmus Mundus Master Degree in Sports Ethics and Integrity (KU Leuven et al.) He worked as a research fellow for the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, and his primary research interests lie in the fields of International Human Rights and sport. 

I.               Introduction

“I can’t do everything and I can’t do it alone. I need allies.” These are the words of the seven-time Formula 1 (F1) world champion, Lewis Hamilton. He was urging more support to advocate for the protection of human rights in the countries visited by Formula 1. During the last years, Hamilton together with Sebastian Vettel, have become the leaders of a movement demanding accountability and greater awareness of the impact of F1 on society.

The inclusion of the Bahrain GP on the F1 racing calendar for the first time in 2004 ignited concerns, which have grown with the inclusion of Abu Dhabi in 2007, Russia in 2014, Azerbaijan in 2017, and Saudi Arabia and Qatar in 2021. The inability and lack of commitment of state authorities to protect and respect human rights, the ineffectiveness of judicial procedures and the systematic repression of political opposition are some of the factors that make these countries prone to human rights violations. Academics and CSOs regularly argue that F1, by signing multi-million dollar contracts with these countries, is complicit in sportswashing. Those pulling the sport’s strings deny these accusations and claim that human rights are at the centre of their agenda when they visit these countries. They claim F1 can drive the improvement of human rights standards in a particular country. However, reality tells a different story. The Bahrain GP has been running for more than a decade and the situation in the country has only worsened, without any signs of F1 contributing to the improvement of the protection of human rights there.

This blog aims to provide an overview of the human rights challenges F1 is facing when hosting a Grand Prix. For this purpose, a case study of the Bahrain GP, one of the longest-running on the modern/current F1 calendar, will be carried out. This will allow us to examine in detail the historical evolution of the GP, the complaints from civil society organisations and the reaction of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and other stakeholders to the ongoing allegations of human rights violations.More...

Call for papers

ISLJ Conference on International Sports Law

Asser Institute, The Hague

25 and 26 October 2022

The Editors of the International Sports Law Journal (ISLJ) invite you to submit abstracts for the ISLJ Conference on International Sports Law, which will take place on 25 and 26 October 2022 at the Asser Institute in The Hague. The ISLJ, published by Springer and TMC Asser Press, is the leading academic publication in the field of international sports law. The conference is a unique occasion to discuss the main legal issues affecting international sports and its governance with renowned academic experts.

We are delighted to announce the following confirmed keynote speakers:

• Jonathan Grix (Professor of Sport Policy and Politics at Manchester Metropolitan University), and
• Mary Harvey (CEO at the Centre for Sport and Human Rights),
• Ben Van Rompuy (Assistant Professor at Leiden University).

We welcome abstracts from academics and practitioners on all issues related to international sports law and governance. We also welcome panel proposals (including a minimum of three presenters) on a specific issue. For this year’s edition, we specifically invite submissions on the following themes and subthemes:

• International sports law and governance in times of conflict:
• The emergence of the idea(l) of political neutrality of SGBs and its translation in legal/governance practice
• The intersection between public international law and international sports law and governance in the context of international conflicts
• The role of sports diplomacy/conditionality in the context of international conflicts
• International sports law and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

• Human rights and mega sporting events (MSEs)
• The adverse or positive impact of MSEs on (specific) human rights
• The influence of human rights commitments on the organisation of MSEs
• The effects of MSEs on human rights in organising countries
• The responsibilities and strategies of SGBs to ensure respect of human rights at MSEs
• The role and responsibilities of states in ensuring respect of human rights in the context of MSEs

• Competition law and challenges to the governance monopoly of SGBs
• The impact of competition law on SGBs and their governance
• The limits of competition law on effecting change in the governance of sport
• The specific modalities of application of competition law to sports governance
• The legitimacy of competition authorities in challenging SGBs

Please send your abstract of 300 words and CV no later than 1 July 2022 to a.duval@asser.nl. Selected speakers will be informed by 15 July.

The selected participants will be expected to submit a draft paper by 10 October 2022. Papers accepted and presented at the conference are eligible for publication in a special issue of the ISLJ subject to peer-review. Submissions after this date will be considered for publication in later editions of the Journal.

The Asser Institute will cover one night accommodation for the speakers and may provide a limited amount of travel grants (max. 250€). If you wish to be considered for a grant, please indicate it in your submission.

Editor's note:

Daniela is a researcher at the Asser Institute in the field of sport and human rights. She has a background in public international law and human rights law and defended her PhD project entitled “Blurred Lines of Responsibility and Accountability – Human Rights Abuses at Mega-Sporting Events” in April 2021 at Tilburg University. She also works as independent consultant in the field of sport and human rights for the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, or the European Parliament among other clients from the sports ecosystem

As Head of Policy and Outreach, Guido is in charge of the Centre for Sport & Human Rights engagement with governments, international and intergovernmental organisations and sports organisations. He represents the Centre at conferences, events and bilateral dialogues to reach new audiences and partners and raise public awareness and understanding of the Centre’s work .

On February 24, 2022, the Russian military invaded Ukrainian territory. What followed was an escalation of the war, day by day, causing thousands of victims and forcing millions of people to flee. On March 2, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution deploring "in the strongest possible terms" Russia's aggression against Ukraine by a vote of 141 to 5, with 35 abstentions. On March 29, Russian and Ukrainian representatives met in Istanbul for another round of negotiations. No ceasefire has been agreed and hostilities continue.

Many states, international organizations and corporations quickly took measures in response to this invasion. Hundreds of companies decided to withdraw from Russia. Some countries decided to strengthen economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus and to provide military and economic help to Ukraine. Many civil society actors mobilised to organize and provide humanitarian support for Ukraine. Interestingly, international sports organisations like the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), World Athletics and many other international federations, issued statements condemning the invasion and imposed bans and sanctions on Russian and Belarussian sports bodies and athletes.

This blog post provides an overview of the measures adopted by a number of international sports federations (IFs) that are part of the Olympic Movement since the beginning of the war and analyses how they relate to the statements issued by the IOC and other sanctions and measures taken by international sports organisations in reaction to (geo)political tensions and conflict.

More...

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: Jeremy Abel is a recent graduate of the LL.M in International Business Law and Sports of the University of Lausanne.

1.     Introduction

The famous South African athlete Caster Semenya is in the last lap of her long legal battle for her right to run without changing the natural testosterone in her body. After losing her cases before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and the Swiss Federal Tribunal, she filed an application before the European Court of Human Rights (Court). In the meantime, the Court has released a summary of her complaint and a series of questions addressed to the parties of the case.

As is well known, she is challenging the World Athletics’ Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification (Regulations) defining the conditions under which female and intersex athletes with certain types of differences of sex development (DSDs) can compete in international athletics events. Despite the Regulations emanating from World Athletics, the last round of her legal battle is against a new opponent: Switzerland.

The purpose of this article is to revisit the Semenya case from a European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) perspective while considering certain excellent points made by previous contributors (see here, here and here) to this blog. Therefore, the blog will follow the basic structure of an ECHR case. The following issues raised by Semenya shall be analysed: the applicability of the ECHR, Semenya’s right to private life (Article 8 ECHR) and to non discrimination (Article 14 ECHR), as well as the proportionality of the Regulations. More...

On Wednesday 26 May 2021 from 16.00-17.00 CET, the Asser International Sports Law Centre, in collaboration with Dr Marjolaine Viret (University of Lausanne), is organising its fifth Zoom In webinar on the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) from the perspective of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

We have the pleasure to be joined by Prof. Helen Keller, former Judge at the ECtHR and a prominent dissenter to the majority’s ruling in the Mutu and Pechstein case.

The ECtHR decision in the Mutu and Pechstein case rendered on 2 October 2018 is widely seen as one of the most important European sports law rulings. It was also the first decision of the Strasbourg court dealing with a case in which the CAS had issued an award. The applicants, Adrian Mutu and Claudia Pechstein, were both challenging the compatibility of CAS proceedings with the procedural rights enshrined in Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The court famously declined to conclude that the CAS lacked independence or impartiality, but did find that, insofar as Claudia Pechstein was concerned, she was forced to undergo CAS arbitration and, therefore, that CAS proceedings had to fully comply with the procedural rights guaranteed in the ECHR. In particular, the court held that the refusal by CAS to hold a public hearing, in spite of Claudia Pechstein’s express request, was contrary to Article 6(1) ECHR. Beyond this case, as highlighted by the recent decision of Caster Semenya to submit an application to the ECtHR, the decision opens the way for a more systematic intervention of the Strasbourg court in assessing the human rights compatibility of CAS awards and more broadly of the transnational sports regulations imposed by international sports governing bodies.

Prof. Helen Keller will discuss with us the implications of the ECtHR’s Mutu and Pechstein decision and the potential for future interventions by the court in the realm of the lex sportiva.

The webinar will take the form of an interview followed by a short Q&A open to the digital public. 

Please note the discussion will NOT be recorded and posted on our Youtube channel. 

Register HERE!

Editor’s note: Stephen Weatherill is the Jacques Delors Professor of European Law at Oxford University. He also serves as Deputy Director for European Law in the Institute of European and Comparative Law, and is a Fellow of Somerville College. This blog appeared first on eulawanalysis.blogspot.com and is reproduced here with the agreement of the author. 

The crumbling of the ‘SuperLeague’ is a source of joy to many football fans, but the very fact that such an idea could be advanced reveals something troublingly weak about the internal governance of football in Europe – UEFA’s most of all – and about the inadequacies of legal regulation practised by the EU and/ or by states. This note explains why a SuperLeague is difficult to stop under the current pattern of legal regulation and why accordingly reform is required in order to defend the European model of sport with more muscularity. More...

The mercato, or transfer window, is for some the most exciting time in the life of a football fan. During this narrow period each summer and winter (for the Europeans), fantastic football teams are made or taken apart. What is less often known, or grasped is that behind the breaking news of the latest move to or from your favourite club lies a complex web of transnational rules, institutions and practices.

Our new intensive two-day Masterclass aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) to a small group of dedicated legal professionals who have the ambition to advise football clubs, represent players or join football governing bodies. The course combines theoretical insights on FIFA’s regulation of the transfer market with practical know-how of the actual operation of the RSTP distilled by hands-on practitioners.

Download the full Programme and register HERE.

The Team:

• Dr Antoine Duval is a senior researcher at the Asser Institute and the head of the Asser International Sports Law Centre. He has widely published and lectured on transnational sports law, sports arbitration and the interaction between EU law and sport. He is an avid football fan and football player and looks forward to walking you through the intricacies of the FIFA transfer system.
  

• Carol Couse is a Partner in the sports team at Mills & Reeve LLP , with extensive in-house and in private practice experience of dealing with sports regulatory matters, whether contentious or non-contentious.  She has advised on many multi million pound international football transfer agreements, playing contracts and image rights agreements on behalf clubs, players and agents.

• Jacques Blondin is an Italian lawyer, who joined FIFA inundefined 2015, working for the Disciplinary Department. In 2019, he was appointed Head of FIFA TMS (now called FIFA Regulatory Enforcement) where he is responsible, among other things, for ensuring compliance in international transfers within the FIFA Transfer Matching System.

• Oskar van Maren joined FIFA as a Legal Counsel in December 2017, forming part of the Knowledge Management Hub, a department created in September 2020. Previously, he worked for FIFA’s Players' Status Department. Between April 2014 and March 2017, he worked as a Junior Researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut. He holds an LL.M in European law from Leiden University (The Netherlands).
• Rhys Lenarduzzi is currently a research intern at the Asser International Sports Law Centre, where he focuses in particular on the transnational regulation of football. Prior to this, he acquired over 5 years of experience as a sports agent and consultant, at times representing over 50 professional athletes around the world from various sports, though predominantly football.
  

Editor’s note: Thomas Terraz is a L.LM. candidate in the European Law programme at Utrecht University and a former intern of the Asser International Sports Law Centre

1.     Sport Nationalism is Politics

Despite all efforts, the Olympic Games has been and will be immersed in politics. Attempts to shield the Games from social and political realities are almost sure to miss their mark and potentially risk being disproportionate. Moreover, history has laid bare the shortcomings of the attempts to create a sanitized and impenetrable bubble around the Games. The first blog of this series examined the idea of the Games as a sanitized space and dived into the history of political neutrality within the Olympic Movement to unravel the irony that while the IOC aims to keep the Olympic Games ‘clean’ of any politics within its ‘sacred enclosure’, the IOC and the Games itself are largely enveloped in politics. Politics seep into the cracks of this ‘sanitized’ space through: (1) public protests (and their suppression by authoritarian regimes hosting the Games), (2) athletes who use their public image to take a political stand, (3) the IOC who takes decisions on recognizing national Olympic Committees (NOCs) and awarding the Games to countries,[1] and (4) states that use the Games for geo-political posturing.[2] With this background in mind, the aim now is to illustrate the disparity between the IOC’s stance on political neutrality when it concerns athlete protest versus sport nationalism, which also is a form of politics.

As was mentioned in part one of this series, the very first explicit mention of politics in the Olympic Charter was in its 1946 version and aimed to combat ‘the nationalization of sports for political aims’ by preventing ‘a national exultation of success achieved rather than the realization of the common and harmonious objective which is the essential Olympic law’ (emphasis added). This sentiment was further echoed some years later by Avery Brundage (IOC President (1952-1972)) when he declared: ‘The Games are not, and must not become, a contest between nations, which would be entirely contrary to the spirit of the Olympic Movement and would surely lead to disaster’.[3] Regardless of this vision to prevent sport nationalism engulfing the Games and its codification in the Olympic Charter, the current reality paints quite a different picture. One simply has to look at the mass obsession with medal tables during the Olympic Games and its amplification not only by the media but even by members of the Olympic Movement.[4] This is further exacerbated when the achievements of athletes are used for domestic political gain[5] or when they are used to glorify a nation’s prowess on the global stage or to stir nationalism within a populace[6]. Sport nationalism is politics. Arguably, even the worship of national imagery during the Games from the opening ceremony to the medal ceremonies cannot be depoliticized.[7] In many ways, the IOC has turned a blind eye to the politics rooted in these expressions of sport nationalism and instead has focused its energy to sterilize its Olympic spaces and stifle political expression from athletes. One of the ways the IOC has ignored sport nationalism is through its tacit acceptance of medal tables although they are expressly banned by the Olympic Charter.

At this point, the rules restricting athletes’ political protest and those concerning sport nationalism, particularly in terms of medal tables, will be scrutinized in order to highlight the enforcement gap between the two. More...

Editor's note: Michele Krech is a JSD Candidate and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow at NYU School of Law. She was retained as a consultant by counsel for Caster Semenya in the proceedings before the Court of Arbitration for Sport discussed above. She also contributed to two reports mentioned in this blog post: the Report of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,  Intersection of race and gender discrimination in sport (June 2020); and the Human Rights Watch Report, “They’re Chasing Us Away from Sport”: Human Rights Violations in Sex Testing of Elite Women Athletes (December 2020).

This blog was first published by the Völkerrechtsblog and is republished here with authorization. Michele Krech will be joining our next Zoom In webinar on 31 March to discuss the next steps in the Caster Semenya case.

Sport is the field par excellence in which discrimination
against intersex people has been made most visible.

Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe
Issue Paper: Human rights and intersex people (2015)

Olympic and world champion athlete Caster Semenya is asking the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to make sure all women athletes are “allowed to run free, for once and for all”. Semenya brings her application against Switzerland, which has allowed a private sport association and a private sport court to decide – with only the most minimal appellate review by a national judicial authority – what it takes for women, legally and socially identified as such all their lives, to count as women in the context of athletics. I consider how Semenya’s application might bring human rights, sex, and sport into conversation in ways not yet seen in a judicial forum. More...

On Wednesday 31 March 2021 from 16.00-17.30 CET, the Asser International Sports Law Centre, in collaboration with Dr Marjolaine Viret (University of Lausanne), is organising its fourth Zoom In webinar on the recent developments arising from the decision of the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) in the case Caster Semenya v. International Association of Athletics Federations (now World Athletics), delivered on 25 August 2020.

Background
The participation of athletes with biological sex differences to international competitions is one of the most controversial issues in transnational sports law. In particular, since 2019, Caster Semenya, an Olympic champion from South-Africa has been challenging the World Athletics eligibility rules for Athletes with Differences of Sex Development (DSD Regulation), which would currently bar her from accessing international competitions (such as the Tokyo Olympics) unless she accepts to undergo medical treatment aimed at reducing her testosterone levels. In April 2019, the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected her challenge against the DSD Regulation in a lengthy award. In response, Caster Semenya and the South African Athletics Federation filed an application to set aside the award before the Swiss Federal Tribunal. In August 2020, the SFT released its decision rejecting Semenya’s challenge of the award (for an extensive commentary of the ruling see Marjolaine Viret’s article on the Asser International Sports Law Blog).

Recently, on 25 February 2021, Caster Semenya announced her decision to lodge an application at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) against Switzerland on the basis of this judgment. In this context, we thought it important to organise a Zoom In webinar around the decision of the SFT and the pending case before the ECtHR. Indeed, should the ECtHR accept the case, it will be in a position to provide a definitive assessment of the human rights compatibility of the DSD Regulation. Moreover, this decision could have important consequences on the role played by human rights in the review of the private regulations and decisions of international sports governing bodies.

Speakers

• Michele Krech (New York University)
• Lena Holzer (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies)
• Prof. Frédéric Bernard (University of Geneva)
• Prof. Antonio Rigozzi (University of Neuchâtel/Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler)

Participation is free, register HERE.

Dear readers,

If you missed it (or wish to re-watch it), the video of our third Zoom In webinar from 25 February on the CAS award in the World Anti-Doping Agency v. Russian Anti-Doping Agency case is available on the YouTube channel of the Asser Institute:

Stay tuned and watch this space, the announcement for the next Zoom In webinar, which will take place on 31 March, is coming soon!

In the past couple of years, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) made remarkable steps towards embedding human rights into their practices and policies. These developments have been discussed at length and in detail in this blog and elsewhere, but a short overview at this point is necessary to set the scene. Arguably, most changes were sparked by John Ruggie’s report from 2016, in which he articulated a set of concrete recommendations for FIFA “on what it means for FIFA to embed respect for human rights across its global operations”, using the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) as authoritative standard.[i] As a result, in May 2017, FIFA published a human rights policy, in which it commits to respecting human rights in accordance with the UNGPs, identifies its salient human rights risks, and acknowledges the potential adverse impacts it can have on human rights in general and human rights of people belonging to specific groups. In October 2017, it adopted new bidding regulations requiring bidders to develop a human rights strategy and conduct an independent human rights risk assessment as part of their bid. In March 2017, FIFA also created a Human Rights Advisory Board, which regularly evaluated FIFA’s human rights progress and made recommendations on how FIFA should address human rights issues linked to its activities. The mandate of the Advisory Board expired at the end of last year and the future of this body is unknown at this point.

While some of these steps can be directly connected to the recommendations in the Ruggie report, other recommendations have largely been ignored. One example of the latter and focus of this blog post is the issue of embedding human rights at the level of national football associations. It outlines recent steps taken by the German football association “Deutscher Fussball-Bund” (DFB) and the Dutch football association “Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond” (KNVB) in relation to human rights, and explores to what extent these steps can be regarded as proactive moves by those associations or rather spillover effects from FIFA’s human rights efforts. More...

On Thursday 25 February 2021 from 16.00-17.30 CET, the Asser International Sports Law Centre, in collaboration with Dr Marjolaine Viret (University of Lausanne), organizes a Zoom In webinar on the recent award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in the case World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) v. Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), delivered on 17 December 2020.

Background
In its 186 pages decision the CAS concluded that RUSADA was non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC) in connection with its failure to procure the delivery of the authentic LIMS data (Laboratory Information Management System) and underlying analytical data of the former Moscow Laboratory to WADA. However, the CAS panel did not endorse the entire range of measures sought by WADA to sanction this non-compliance. It also reduced the time frame of their application from four to two years. The award has been subjected to a lot of public attention and criticisms, and some have expressed the view that Russia benefited from a lenient treatment.   

This edition of our Zoom in webinars will focus on assessing the impact of the award on the world anti-doping system. More specifically, we will touch upon the decision’s effect on the capacity of WADA to police institutionalized doping systems put in place by certain states, the ruling’s regard for the rights of athletes (Russian or not), and its effect on the credibility of the world anti-doping system in the eyes of the general public.

To discuss the case with us, we are very happy to welcome the following speakers:

• Michele Verroken (Sporting Integrity Limited, Independent Anti-Doping Expert)
• Herman Ram (CEO of the Dutch NADO/Dopingautoriteit)
• Prof. Jean-Loup Chappelet (University of Lausanne)

Participation is free, register HERE.