Editor's note: Daniela Heerdt is a PhD candidate at Tilburg
Law School in the Netherlands and works as Research Officer for the Centre for Sports and
Human Rights. Her PhD research deals with the
establishment of responsibility and accountability for adverse human rights
impacts of mega-sporting events, with a focus on FIFA World Cups and Olympic
Games. She published an article in the International Sports Law Journal that discusses to what extent the revised bidding and hosting
regulations by FIFA, the IOC and UEFA strengthen access to remedy for
mega-sporting events-related human rights violations.
On November
26th, the Human Rights Advisory Board[1]
of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) published its second report. This blog provides a summary and brief
evaluation of the report, by drawing a comparison to the previous report issued by the Human Rights Advisory
Board (hereinafter: the Board) based on the content of the recommendations and
FIFA’s efforts to implement the Board’s recommendations. The third part of this
blog briefly reflects on the broader implications of some of the new
recommendations issued for FIFA’s internal policies. The conclusion provides
five more general points of observation on the report.
Old and New
Recommendations
In its
second report, the Board makes 30 ‘specific recommendations’ to FIFA, just
slightly less than the previous one. However, not all of these recommendations
are new to FIFA. A number of them have been released in the two update
statements the Board released since the publication of its first report, one in
May 2018 and one in October 2018. Two more sets of recommendations were
communicated to FIFA in December 2017 and February 2018, which are as well
included in this new report, but which have not been reported publicly before.
Content-wise, most of the
recommendations still deal with the human rights risks associated with FIFA’s
upcoming and past events. The recommendations made with regard to the human
rights issues surrounding the 2018 World Cup hosted by Russia have been issued
in December 2017 and concern the general situation and human rights of
construction workers, human rights defenders and media representatives, mostly
recommending that FIFA should use its leverage to address these issues with the
government or other relevant stakeholders, such as the Local Organizing
Committee (LOC). Another December-recommendation concerned the sharing of
measures taken by FIFA to investigate the involvement of Russia football
players in the Russian doping scandal. Furthermore, the report includes the
Board’s recommendations regarding the controversies surrounding the choice of accommodation of the Egyptian national team[2], which had been addressed in a set of recommendations initially issued
in February 2018[AD1] . With regard to the human rights
requirements for hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the report repeats the
recommendation issued in May 2018, concerning FIFA’s task to take into account
the capacity of bidders to assess and manage human rights risks when deciding
for a host. On this issue, the report also introduces a new recommendation for
FIFA to reflect on the inclusion of human rights into the bidding requirements.
Furthermore, the report also includes ‘interim recommendations’ in relation to
the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar, and disclosed that a more detailed set of
recommendations can be expected shortly.[3]
While these
issues were already present in the first report, four new issues have been
added in this second report by the Board:
- player’s rights,
- child safeguarding,
- the ban on woman attending sport
matches in Iran,
- and FIFA’s approach to engagement
and communication on human rights.[4]
With regard
to player’s rights, the Board’s recommendations focus on access to remedy and FIFA’s
evaluation of existing football arbitration mechanisms from a human rights
perspective, the rules of the employment market for players and FIFA’s review
of these rules, and on FIFA’s regulations on player’s rights which need to take
the specific situation of children into account. Concerning child safeguarding,
the Board recommends that FIFA’s safeguarding working group should conduct a
comprehensive stakeholder consultation to identify the responsibilities of
member associations concerning child players. Regarding the issue of
discrimination against women in Iran, the Board recommends for FIFA to use its
leverage on the Iranian Association and to issue sanctions if nothing is
changing. Finally, on FIFA’s approach to engagement and communication on human
rights issues, the Board recommends that FIFA establishes a systematic annual
dialogue with key stakeholders, in addition to individual and event-specific
stakeholder engagement and that it adopts a transparent approach on negative
impacts connected to FIFA’s activities. Furthermore, the Board calls on FIFA to
communicate this approach and share relevant information with confederations
and member associations.
What also changed in the second report is that
the Board does not issue requests to FIFA anymore. All measures proposed are
formulated as recommendations. However, it is questionable to what extent the
requests entailed in the first report really made a difference, since the
majority of these requests were merely inquiries for more information or
clarifications on certain issues.[5]
Such requests about additional information or more transparency on certain
issues are now included in the recommendations, such as in recommendation R42,
asking FIFA to “be as transparent as possible” and to “proactively publish the
steps it has taken”.[6]
The New Tracking System
The second
report of FIFA’s Human Rights Advisory Board is not only longer in terms of
page numbers but it also provides more
detailed insights into human rights-related efforts FIFA undertook in the past
year and continues to undertake, based on the recommendations it received. While
in the first report, ‘part B’ consisted of a general overview of FIFA’s human
rights efforts up to that point in time, ‘part B’ in the new report lists
concrete measures taken by FIFA in reaction to the recommendations issued by
the Board in its first report and other recommendations statements made in the
past year. To assess these measures, the second report introduces a tracking
system, which ranks the status of FIFA’s implementation of the Board’s
recommendations from 1 to 4, moving from no implementation (1), to ongoing implementation (2),
to advanced implementation (3), and
to full or “closed out” implementation (4).[7]
There is only one recommendation for which implementation
has not yet started (category 1) according
to the Board. This concerns the promotion of a policy with host countries of
direct employment of construction workers to prevent the strong reliance on
subcontractors, which involves greater risks for workers and migrant workers in
particular.[8] Ongoing
implementation (category 2) has been
observed in relation to the embedding of human rights throughout the FIFA
organisation, including relevant committees and key staff, as well as its
member associations, the testing of the method of risk identification with
informed stakeholders to confirm or challenge findings, and the joint
inspections together with LOCs. Furthermore, the Board assessed that
implementation is ongoing for three other recommendations: first, FIFA’s
considerations on how it can make the most efficient use of its leverage when
it comes to the issue of security arrangements linked to hosting a FIFA event;
secondly, the publishing of information on the design, operation, and the
results of the monitoring of construction sites; and thirdly, making prompt and
factual statements to show awareness and knowledge about critical human rights
issues when they arise. The Board found that FIFA made considerable advancement
(category 3) in developing a system
for risk identification, such as
monitoring systems or the detailed human rights salience analysis that is part
of the Sustainability Strategy and policy of the 2022 World Cup, as well as in
identifying risks to fundamental civil and political rights and communicating
its expectation to respect these rights with host governments.
The adoption of a human rights policy has been
assessed as fully implemented (category
4). The same evaluation has been made in relation to the recommendations
for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments, as well as for the bidding
processes and the 2026 FIFA World Cup. However, even though the implementation
efforts concerning these issues have been evaluated under the same category, taking
a closer look reveals that the actual status of implementation is not the same.
This is because category 4 combines two criteria, which in fact reflect very
different results. ‘Full implementation’ does not necessarily reflect the same
situation as ‘closed out implementation’. In other words, a reason for an
implementation to end (‘close out’) is not necessarily linked to the fact that the
recommended measure has been implemented in its entirety. In fact, full
implementation of a certain measure can produce a completely different scenario
than abandoning a certain recommendation or measure.
This can be illustrated by taking a closer look
at the implementation of measures recommended to FIFA concerning the handling
of human rights issues related to the 2018 World Cup. Most of them have been
assessed as fully implemented or closed out, and so have the measures taken in
relation to the 2022 World Cup. In reality, however, the 2018 World Cup lies in
the past and the majority of measures taken in that context were discontinued
before they could fully be implemented. For example, the recommendation on
offering the Egyptian team an alternative location, including the financial
support needed, has been evaluated as ‘closed out’, even though the Egyptian
team in the end decided to stick with Grozny. The same can be said about the
recommendation that FIFA should raise with the LOC that timely compensation is
provided in case a worker on the World Cup construction sites got injured. Even
though FIFA states that they did not have access to any financial records that
would allow a verification of cash flows, the recommendation has been evaluated
as “implemented/closed out”.[9]
Due to this combination of two criteria under category 4, simply taking a look
at the tabular overview provided at the end of the report[10]
can create a distorted picture of the actual implementation status of the
Board’s recommendations. Instead, a more careful look at FIFA’s actual efforts
on certain issues is necessary to fully understand whether FIFA was indeed
successful in implementing a certain recommendation, or whether it just dropped
the implementation, for instance because it was linked to a certain event that is
over now.
The Implications for
FIFA’s Internal Policies
Some of the recommendations included in the
report relate to how FIFA embeds its human rights commitments internally and
within its member associations. For instance, according to the Board FIFA
should discuss with the Board the reasons for the decision of the Ethics
Committee to not publish a detailed explanation of how it reached a decision in
a case, and that it should review its operations in that regard.[11]
In addition, it recommends FIFA to be explicit with its member associations on
what it expects and in what timeframe it expects them to align with FIFA’s
human rights responsibilities. The Board also implies that anticipated
sanctions should be included in FIFA Statutes, the Disciplinary Code and the
Ethics Code.[12]
Furthermore, the
update statement by FIFA in this second report reveals that a number of
measures were taken in relation to embedding human rights in its organization,
based on previous recommendations made by the Board. For instance, FIFA Council and Committee
members have to follow an e-learning course, which includes a human rights
module, and a human rights working group has been established within FIFA’s
Governance Committee. However, implementation on those matters is ongoing and it
becomes clear that this so far has not been the focus of FIFA’s human
rights-related efforts and more could be done in that regard.[13]
The context and overview FIFA provides on embedding the respect for human
rights is rather vague and the measures taken so far do not reach the entire
FIFA organization.[14]
Conclusion
A number of
general observations can be made based on this summary and comparison. First, most
recommendations and action taken by FIFA seem to concentrate on FIFA’s
commitment to identify and address human rights risks, which actually was already
the case in the first report. Secondly, while FIFA’s events still seem to be a
priority, the Board focused also on new issues. Yet, perhaps not enough
attention is dedicated to changing FIFA’s international structures and culture
into a well-established acceptance and reflection of FIFA’s human rights responsibilities.
Furthermore, the report provides valuable and detailed insight into the progress
made and how it is made, for instance in relation to FIFA’s leverage over
Qatar’s Supreme Committee and the Qatari government to change certain
regulations, the human rights defender cases in which FIFA intervened, or the
external partners FIFA worked with to address certain human rights risks.[15]
Finally, it is a comprehensive report, reflecting the Board’s understanding
towards FIFA’s burden of having to address issues of “the past, present and
future all at once”, and the fact that “FIFA has to deal with the legacy of
decisions taken and contracts signed before the organisation recognized its
human rights responsibilities”.[16]
This also shows that FIFA takes the Board seriously and in many ways follows
the Board’s recommendations.
In general, the fact that FIFA has an active
Human Rights Advisory Board in place for more than a year now and renewed its
mandate until the end of 2020 should be applauded.[17]
Just this month, the International Olympic Committee
announced
that it is also setting up a Human Rights Advisory Committee, which is supposed
to be fully operational by the 2024 Olympic Games, unfortunately not in time for
the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.