As it ends its second and final two-year mandate, the FIFA Human Rights Advisory Board commends FIFA for its “significant progress” and for leading the way to embed respect for human rights in sports bodies. Ultimately, in its final report the Board concludes that FIFA should create a new internal governance structure to build on this progress and further strengthen its governance of human rights (especially in the wake of COVID and in advance of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar). Specifically, FIFA should create “a functioning accountability mechanism with the mandate, expertise, capacity and incentives to ensure the integration of human rights into decision-making by relevant FIFA bodies.” This mechanism should oversee FIFA’s human rights efforts through the entire life cycle of the 2022 World Cup, include human rights expertise, be able to hold FIFA leadership and Council accountable and ensure transparency about FIFA’s work – including set-backs.
The FIFA Human Rights Advisory Board was established in 2017, following a 2016 report and recommendations by John Ruggie, with the objective of helping FIFA to “strengthen its efforts to ensure respect for human rights.” The Advisory Board is made up of eight international human rights experts, who were mandated to independently assess FIFA’s human rights policies and practices and make recommendations to strengthen its approach. The Board has released its fifth and final report with recommendations to FIFA’s leadership, following the conclusion of its second two-year mandate at the end of 2020.
Summary of focus areas and recommendations made to FIFA in 2020
- Focusing on multiple issues around women’s rights in football, compounded by the inequalities between men and women that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendations included:
- Strengthening FIFA’s safeguarding reporting and case management system for cases of sexual abuse and violence against women and girls, including in Afghanistan and Haiti
- “Ensuring respect for women’s rights at all levels by more closely linking FIFA’s strategy on women in the game and its human rights commitments”
- Improving workers’ rights, especially in partnership with FIFA’s Qatari partners in the lead-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Recommendations included:
- Playing a role, with the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy in Qatar, to “seek to enable timely remedy for workers”, in particular when they have paid recruitment fees or not been paid their wages
- “Cascading the changes” on workers’ rights from World Cup-managed construction sites to the rest of the country
- “Using leverage creatively to strengthen worker voice and break down discriminatory barriers, as well as supporting truly ethical recruitment of migrant workers”
Key learnings following the mandate of the Board
- “Significant progress” made: According to the Board, “FIFA has taken action on a majority of our nearly 90 recommendations over that time: specifically, 60% of our recommendations have been implemented or closed out and the remaining 40% are in ongoing or advanced stages of implementation.”
- Playing a leadership role: FIFA was the first sports body to establish a Human Rights Advisory Board model. In this sense, “FIFA has led the way for other sports bodies in integrating recognition of its responsibility to respect human rights into its Statutes and into contracts with tournament hosts, and in taking substantial strides to operationalise those commitments across a wide range of issues and cases. It has also built important internal capacity with dedicated staff addressing diverse human rights issues on a daily basis.”
- “Continued progress may become more, rather than less, challenging”: There is “increased stakeholder pressure on fundamental human rights issues ranging from combatting structural racism, to protecting children, to equity for women at all levels of the game, and to the risks of large-scale tournaments exacerbating existing inequalities in over-stretched cities already struggling with COVID-19. To manage these challenges, FIFA will need a comprehensive human rights strategy and a body that can speak honestly to it about its performance – as we have done – with the statutory power to ensure the organisation listens to independent views on key strategic decisions.”
- Time to internalise human rights management: In February 2020, the Board recommended “that FIFA move to embed human rights oversight within its internal governance structures, and specifically that it “[e]stablish a functioning accountability mechanism with the mandate, expertise, capacity and incentives to ensure the integration of human rights into decision-making by relevant FIFA bodies (including the FIFA Council, the Standing Committees and the Independent Committees)”. “In particular, we believe there is an urgent need for a body to provide ongoing and independent evaluation of FIFA’s human rights efforts through the entire life cycle of the FWC 2022,” as the potential for severe human rights impacts from the games in Qatar remains.
- New governance structure should “meet three essential and mutually reinforcing criteria”: In order to gain stakeholder trust and shore up its human rights governance, this new governance should: (1) “include independent human rights expertise”; (2) “ensure that FIFA leadership and Council are accountable for how they integrate human rights into their decisions”; and (3) “ensure transparency about progress and set-backs in FIFA’s human rights work.”
“As we conclude our second and final mandate, after four years of voluntary service, we want to recognise the significant progress on human rights that FIFA has made. … FIFA has taken some, and often substantial, action on every single recommendation we have made. In some specific cases we wanted FIFA to go further, faster; in others, we wanted FIFA to put in place systems that would prevent such detailed recommendations being needed in future. Where FIFA did put such systems in place – for example, for liaising with its Qatari partners on urgent cases involving migrant workers – the impact is likely to be more sustainable over time.”
FIFA Human Rights Advisory Board, Fifth Report by the FIFA Human Rights Advisory Board (February 2021)
“Looking back over the last four years, we believe the organisation deserves genuine credit for the progress it has made. FIFA has led the way for other sports bodies in integrating recognition of its responsibility to respect human rights into its Statutes and into contracts with tournament hosts, and in taking substantial strides to operationalise those commitments across a wide range of issues and cases. It has also built important internal capacity with dedicated staff addressing diverse human rights issues on a daily basis.”
FIFA Human Rights Advisory Board, Fifth Report by the FIFA Human Rights Advisory Board (February 2021)
