Mega Sporting Events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games, FIFA World Cup,Footnote ¹ Commonwealth Games, the World Cups of Cricket and Rugby Union, and regional gatherings like the European and Pan-American Games, have come under unprecedented media and campaigning scrutiny in recent years, never more so than between the Olympics of London 2012 and Rio 2016. Reports of widespread corruption within the highest echelons of sport, including within the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF),Footnote ² and systematic doping allegations from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA),Footnote ³ have captured significant media attention, but so too have human rights concerns tied to the planning and delivery of these events. From allegations of sweatshop labour in the manufacture of merchandise for the London 2012 Olympics,Footnote ⁴ or forced evictions and police killings of Rio’s favela residents,Footnote ⁵ to concerns over the treatment of Russia’s LGBT community during Sochi in 2014,Footnote ⁶ or reports of forced labour and migrant worker exploitation in Qatar ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup,Footnote ⁷ mega-sporting events (MSEs) represent something of a microcosm of the human rights issues analyzed within business and human rights (BHR) circles. This piece discusses the breadth of the human rights concerns at stake, emerging good practice, obstacles to progress, and collective action efforts to address them being facilitated by the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB).

The high profile nature and global reach of MSEs offers enormous potential to catalyze progress on BHR within new markets and new industries. Between 2008 and 2022 the list of hosting countries for MSEs will have included China, South Africa, the UK, Russia, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Australia, South Korea, Japan and Qatar. These events will have involved host governments, local organizing committees and a plethora of business actors, including the sports sector itself, as well as developers, planners, logistics experts, and architects; construction, infrastructure and engineering firms; sporting good and merchandise manufacturers and their suppliers; agribusiness and food suppliers; hospitality and event organizing businesses, and a diverse spectrum of sponsor and broadcasting partners. For many, BHR is brand new territory.

As with other large, complex, and logistically challenging commercial endeavours, MSEs carry inherent human rights risks across the event life-cycle.Footnote ⁸ The risks vary from one context to the next—reflecting among other things levels of economic prosperity, income distribution, and regulatory protection. Yet if one takes stock of MSEs over the last two decades a recurring pattern of human rights challenges emerges. Ranging from forced evictions, resettlement issues and housing rights abuses during land acquisition and development; to labour rights questions and migrant worker exploitation during venue construction and infrastructure development, as well as in the manufacture of assorted goods (e.g., sporting goods, event merchandise and food products), and services (e.g., hospitality and catering). During the event itself other issues repeatedly arise, including: discrimination—off and on the field of play—limitations on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly;Footnote ⁹ the clearances or criminalization of homeless people and street-children; and constraints on the ability of street vendors and small businesses to trade, arising from the possibly unintended consequences of imposing commercial exclusion zones to combat so-called ‘ambush marketing’ by competitors to the official event sponsors.Footnote ¹⁰ Human rights risks linked to corruption, associated with security and policing are commonplace. As is the introduction of temporary legislation by the host government (often at the behest of the sports governing body as part of the host city/country contract) and occasional resulting suspensions of normal human rights safeguards, including in the case of Brazil some protecting child rights.Footnote ¹¹ Lightning-rod issues are routine. These are not always associated with the event itself, but linked instead either to the human rights record of an event sponsor, or systemic human rights concerns within the host country.Footnote ¹² Beyond this is the wider debate of opportunity costs of money spent in delivering MSEs that could have been allocated to social investment.

A key worry—voiced by participants at a high level conference convened by IHRB, Wilton Park and the Swiss Government in November 2015, which not only included leaders from civil society and trade unions, but also global sponsors, business associations, figures within sport, governments, and intergovernmental bodiesFootnote ¹³ —is that the same human rights challenges are recurring year on year, and event after event, with little sign that lessons are being learnt. Knowledge sharing on human rights matters is minimal, both within the same sports tradition and across competitions. This is vital when one recognizes that the same host nations are often staging two MSEs in quick succession.Footnote ¹⁴ Organizers from the Rio Olympics, for example, have spoken publicly on the need for better knowledge transfer, greater cross-fertilization of knowledge, and for collaborative action.Footnote ¹⁵

In a commentary piece written at the start of 2016, John Morrison, IHRB’s Executive Director and author of The Social License Footnote ¹⁶ , suggested that: ‘Major sports bodies face a growing crisis of legitimacy’ and need to win back the trust of potential host communities.Footnote ¹⁷ This view was, in part, based on the fact that between October 2014 and November 2015, Oslo, Boston and Hamburg had each withdrawn from contests to stage the Winter or Summer Olympic Games, reflecting local concerns of politicians or populations (voiced through referenda) over the bureaucratic demands of staging the events, the uncertain return on investment, and/or the perceived adverse social impacts. All nations that meet the necessary criteria ought to be able to have the opportunity to host an MSE, but unless the social license of sport is rebuilt, there is a danger that these events will start to become the preserve of countries that do not rely on democratic consent. As participants at the November 2015 Wilton Park conference noted, new ‘more effective, collaborative strategies are needed to prevent, mitigate and remedy abuses of labour standards and human rights associated with the life-cycle of mega-sporting events’.Footnote ¹⁸

It would be misleading and unfair to imply that all is rotten in the world of sport. Mega-sporting events of course generate human rights benefits. They create jobs, offer new employment and skills-development opportunities, precipitate urban regeneration, improve transport infrastructure and digital access, deliver new—if not always net increases—in public housing, bolster tourism, promote sports participation and healthy living, and help foster positive attitudes towards people with disabilities, women in sport and marginalized groups.Footnote ¹⁹ Sport can also play a wider human rights promotional role. At Rio 2016 the International Olympic Committee (IOC), for example, created a path for a team of refugees to compete under the Olympic flag; an important symbolic gesture at a time when the number of refugees globally has exceeded 21 million.Footnote ²⁰

The world of sport has also begun to respond to the human rights challenge. There is a body of emerging good practice. The Glasgow 2014 Organising Committee (for the Commonwealth Games) became the first, and so far only, local organizing committee to adopt a human rights statement which acknowledged international standards and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), and to report on its human rights performance. The organizers of the Vancouver (Winter), London and Rio Olympics, and Glasgow Commonwealth Games, put in place sustainable sourcing codes linked to International Labour Organization (ILO) standards. The London Olympics meanwhile broke new ground in setting up an independent watchdog body, the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, and by establishing a complaints and dispute resolution mechanism to handle grievances, as well as collective agreements with unions.Footnote ²¹

In the last two years there has also been substantial progress from the sports governing bodies themselves. This a crucial because these bodies award the host countries/cities the events, set the terms for doing so, conclude the host city/government contracts, and hold the principal sponsor and broadcasting relationships (local organizing committees typically have their own national level commercial partnerships). The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) was the first to explicitly include a commitment to human rights within its governance plans, via its ‘Transformation 2022’ strategy. The CGF has also committed to fully integrating human rights into its Games bidding criteria, and is building the human rights due diligence capacity of its government and delivery partners for the next four Commonwealth (and Youth) Games in partnership with UNICEF and IHRB. FIFA commissioned John Ruggie and Shift Ltd. to analyze its internal governance and to produce a series of recommendations for soccer’s governing body on how to integrate human rights considerations across its operations. This has resulted in a new human rights statement,Footnote ²² and a revision in early 2016 to FIFA’s constitution, the FIFA Statutes, to include respect for human rights and plans to integrate human rights into the next World Cup bidding criteria.Footnote ²³ FIFA has also pledged to set up an oversight body to monitor working conditions systems ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.Footnote ²⁴ In September 2015 the IOC issued a new Host City Contract for the 2024 Games, which included new anti-discrimination provisions and built on the Olympic Agenda 2020 reform package,Footnote ²⁵ but fell short of addressing wider human rights explicitly. On the eve of the Rio Olympics, however, it emerged that the IOC is in talks with the Sport and Rights Alliance, a coalition of leading sport and human rights groups and unions, on how the human rights abuses seen in the build-up to the Rio Olympics can be prevented in future and has introduced a human rights clause within its Code of Ethics.Footnote ²⁶

One of the tests going forward will be the extent to which any institutional or political opposition, notably within FIFA and the IOC, can be overcome to ensure delivery on recent promises.Footnote ²⁷ Another possible hurdle may be the attachment some within the sporting world hold to the concept of the ‘autonomy of sport’; the idea that sport is exceptional, set apart somehow from politics and the wider business world. Although not universally endorsed, this conceptFootnote ²⁸ has been recognized by the UN General Assembly in a resolutionFootnote ²⁹ and carries weight within sporting circles. There is no reason, however, that it should prevent progress for MSEs on business and human rights. Notwithstanding sport’s power to inspire humanity, its capacity to promote peace and development as noted in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,Footnote ³⁰ or the legal status of the IOC, FIFA and several other sports federations as associations under Swiss law, the fact is that sport and MSEs in particular are big business. FIFA reportedly made US$4.5 billion from sales directly related to the soccer Brazil 2014 World Cup, the majority of which was generated from television rights and sponsorship agreements.Footnote ³¹ The rules that apply to the wider business community on human rights thus ought to apply to MSE organizers too.

John Ruggie in his report for FIFA, For the Game. For the World, pointed out that: ‘the [UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights] provisions on the responsibility to respect human rights are applicable to any comparable sports organization that has not yet undertaken such a commitment’.Footnote ³² Other influential players are also taking this line. Here the Swiss OECD National Contact Point (NCP) established an important precedent when in 2015 it accepted a ‘specific instance’ complaint lodged by the Building and Wood Workers’ International against FIFA. In doing so it stated that: ‘The key question [is] whether an entity is involved in commercial activities, independently of its legal form or its sector of activity’.Footnote ³³

How then to build on the emerging good practice, but also address a breadth of human rights challenges, many of which are beyond the capacity of any one stakeholder to resolve? And how to deal with a lack of general knowhow on business and human rights among key actors? Or to achieve greater accountability so that affected stakeholders, who have been too long excluded, have a stronger voice in the decision-making process and have access to remedy when it is needed? One answer, which IHRB has been helping to facilitate, is to forge greater collective action. On the back of the November 2015 Wilton Park conference a new multi-stakeholder coalition, chaired by Mary Robinson,Footnote ³⁴ has come together to explore innovative and collaborative solutions to the human rights challenges that have dogged MSEs, including the potential for establishing a new independent centre for human rights learning, collective action and accountability for mega-sporting events. The group is supported by UN and international agencies, governments, sports bodies, major sponsors and members of the wider business community, and a range of unions, civil society groups and national human rights institutions, and is committed to promoting human rights learning, collaborative action and accountability within MSEs.Footnote ³⁵

Since March 2016 this coalition has been engaged in a process of evidence gathering in order to better understand a number of the human rights challenges that confront MSEs and to explore a range of possible solutions and recommendations for the future. Clustered under a series of ‘test tracks’, coalition participants have, among other things, begun to identify ways in which human rights due diligence can be advanced, both within procurement for MSEs and at the host city/country level, including through the capacity-building of key actors. Others have been mapping the channels for remedy available to those impacted by MSEs and assessing how these could be bolstered where necessary. Additional work has been done in relation to the bidding requirements for staging MSEs, and to explore how human rights risks could be pinpointed during the bidding phase to ensure that they are more effectively prevented or mitigated. Initial findings from this work formed a central plank of a conference in Washington D.C. in October 2016, which reflected on progress and next steps.

MSEs are built on principles of harmony among nations, solidarity and fair play, but if these festivals of sport are to continue to inspire future generations as they have in the past, MSEs now need to be built on respect for human rights. MSE organizers have to retain, and in some cases regain, the trust and enthusiasm of local residents, athletes, workers and fans. Meaningful engagement with those most affected by these events is overdue, as is greater co-ordination and information sharing on non-commercial matters. The good news is that across a wide range of critical stakeholders there is now a genuine appetite for reform. The next step is to convert this goodwill into action, and bring more comprehensive and consistent approaches to managing social risks and confronting adverse human rights impacts arising from major sporting events. Let us hope that we can come together and strive for excellence off the sporting field to advance the rights that unite us.