The International Olympic Committee has been criticised by a coalition of human rights organisations for not living up to the expectations created by its Agenda 2020 reform programme.
The Sport and Rights Alliance – which includes Amnesty International, the International Trade Union Confederation and Transparency International among others – has said the absence of any explicit reference to human rights in its newly redrafted host city contract is a “shocking omission”.
When Thomas Bach was elected IOC president in 2013, he promised to introduce a series of reforms to the bidding process as well as clauses relating to non-discrimination and labour practices, earning praise from Human Rights Watch. But Amnesty International Netherlands director, Eduard Nazarski, said the new host city contracts, published last week when it was announced Paris, Los Angeles, Budapest, Rome and Hamburg would bid, did not go nearly far enough.
“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 before 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,” Nazarski said.
“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.”
The criticism is likely to come as a surprise to the IOC, which believed it had got the human rights movement onside by including a ban on discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in the wake of the furore that surrounded Sochi 2014 and provisions that would force contractors building venues and infrastructure to comply with minimum international labour standards.
The new contracts, made public last week when the list of bidders was unveiled, also force host cities to guarantee freedom of expression for the media – but only during the period of the Games. The SRA said that the changes did not go nearly far enough.
The coalition, which also includes Football Supporters Europe and Terre des Hommes, called for an explicit commitment to human rights in the new contract that included “compliance with international human rights obligations, access to remedy, human rights due diligence and risk assessment”. It said the requirements on labour and anti-corruption standards were “severely lacking in details”.
“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,” said Sylvia Schenk of Transparency International Germany. “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.”
The IOC director of communications, Mark Adams, defended the changes that had been made and said they had been welcomed at the time by the members of the coalition. “We were surprised by these comments since the changes to the host city contract were publicly welcomed by member groups of this alliance at the time,” he said.
“The host city contract Olympic Games 2024 explicitly references all three areas highlighted by the Sport and Rights Alliance: LGBT rights, workers’ rights and free reporting in the context of the Olympic Games.”
Bach is desperate for the battle for the 2024 summer Games to be a competitive, controversy-free race against a backdrop of increased public concern over the costs and implications of hosting the Olympics. Adams said the changes that had been made to the host city contracts were significant and would make a difference.
“By signing the host city contract, Games organisers commit to upholding all aspects of the Olympic Charter for all Games-related matters and for all participants,” he said. “This includes respect of Principle 6 of the Olympic Charter that was changed to include explicit reference to non-discrimination for all participants of the Games on the grounds of sexual orientation and mirrors the United Nations declaration of human rights.”
