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UNI Global Union and World Players Association leadership propelled two years of collective action and commitment to establish independent Centre for Sport and Human Rights in 2018

UNI Global Union and World Players Association capped a busy week of talks on strengthening the remedy pillar of the UN Guiding Principles Business and Human Rights with a robust display of leadership and solidarity at the second annual Sporting Chance Forum on Human Rights in Geneva.

The Sporting Chance Forum opened with unprecedented statements by top global leaders in sport, human rights, and labour rights, and culminated in a commitment by more than 30 key sport federations, international organisations, governments, sponsors and broadcasters, NGOs, and trade unions, including UNI Global Union and World Players Association, to establish a new Centre for Sport & Human Rights next year.  World Players will now work to ensure the Centre is independent, sound, transparent, agile, responsive, well-governed, and works for people, so that it can serve its mission to create a world of sport that promotes and protects the human rights of everyone affected by sport.

High-level endorsements were made for the Centre in the opening keynote session, chaired by Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, including commitments by Swiss State Secretary Pascale Baeriswyl, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, ILO Director-General, Guy Ryder, and President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach.  Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvRlNM36x8U&feature=youtu.be.

In his remarks, ILO Director-General Ryder challenged the Centre to bring together the granular progress that has been made over the past two years of collective action into something more integrated, permanent, and comprehensive.  He also made clear statements on the changing nature of the relationship between sport and work and the importance of player and athlete representation and access to remedy:

“Ladies and gentlemen, from the perspective of the International Labour Organisation, mega-sporting events constitute a very important opportunity to forward our descent work agenda for millions of workers and for the people and the institutions involved directly or indirectly.  They provide the potential to create local capacities that place human and labour rights at the heart of the events, and to recognise that these fundamental rights, including the right to be represented and have access to effective remediation, apply to athletes and sportspeople as they do to all of the other workers concerned.”  

Recap of UNI Global Union and World Players Association representation at the Forum

UNI Global Union and World Players were represented in force throughout the Sporting Chance Forum sessions and ancillary events.

The Forum kicked off with an evening screening of the documentary film The Workers Cup, which goes inside the labour camps of Qatar where African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities of the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals compete in a football tournament of their own.  The screening was followed by a discussion with the filmmaker and the Secretary General of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Hassan Al Thawadi. After attending the screening and discussion, UNI Global Union Deputy General Secretary Christy Hoffman said the personal stories of the living and labour conditions of the workers featured in the film portray the plight of hundreds of thousands of workers in Qatar and millions around the world who are being deprived of their basic human rights, descent work, and dignity.  

World Players was represented in the plenary session on “Advancing Women’s Rights Through Sport” by Kathryn Gill, who works as Player Relations Executive for Professional Footballers Australia and who still holds the record for most international goals scored for her country as former captain of “The Matildas”, Australia’s women’s national football team.  Gill shared her personal story of leadership in the Matildas’ courageous strike to help close the gender pay gap for the women national players who faced substandard work conditions and unequal pay despite performing at the top of their game.

On the panel with Gill was Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, a US basketball star player who won the 2017 Freedom from Fear Award from UNI Global Union for her successful campaign to have FIBA’s hijab ban overturned. Her campaign brought together World Players, Human Rights Watch, Shirzanan (an advocacy group for women athletes), Athlete Ally, and basketball player associations from around the world including World Players affiliates, the National Basketball Players Association and EU Athletes. Abdul-Qaadir’s heart-breaking story of losing three years of playing basketball professionally because as a Muslim woman she wears a hijab highlighted the urgent need to align sports bodies’ regulations with international human rights law.

World Players Executive Director, Brendan Schwab, moderated the second plenary session highlighting cases of individuals and groups of people affected by sport.  Together, these panels presented a wide range of human rights risks associated with sport, spanning multiple sport governing bodies, geographic regions, and affected groups of people—including indigenous groups, LGBTI, human rights defenders, players, persons with disabilities, workers, women, children, and religious believers. Together, they made a compelling case for the need for an independent Centre on Sport and Human Rights.

President of World Players, Don Fehr, addressed the plenary in the closing session of Day 1 to reflect on “The Nature of the Challenge.” Fehr said ultimately the Centre will come down to remedy and outlined the needed characteristics of grievance mechanisms in sport—that they be accessible, affordable, and fast—to ensure an effective remedy for athletes who will never get back a game or a career if redress takes too long.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Fehr said.

World Players’ expert on Sport and Human Rights, Gigi Alford, moderated the parallel session focused on developing a human rights due diligence tool for commercial broadcasters and rights-holders that televise sport.  The panel highlighted the importance of this discussion, as this set of actors not only serves as the window to the world of sport for a global audience but also brings in as much as 70% of the revenue generated by mega-sporting events and thus holds considerable leverage in achieving greater commitments to and implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in sport. 

UNI Global Union General Secretary, Philip Jennings, welcomed the broad support for the announced Centre for Sport and Human Rights coming from the highest levels of the world’s premier institutions of sport, human rights, and labour rights.

“With such heavyweights stepping into the ring,” Jennings said, “this Centre has the potential to be the knockout punch for human rights violations and labour rights abuses in sport, as long as we all live up to our commitments.”

World Players Association views on the Centre for Sport and Human Rights

World Players has been a strong supporter of and leader within the collective efforts to secure a growing set of institutional commitments over the past 12-18 months to uphold human rights in sport, in line with international human rights and labour rights standards.  Securing these commitments has been an important first step, but now stakeholders have the moral obligation to ensure they are successfully delivered and that an effective remedy is in place to redress harms when they occur.  The independent Centre for Sport and Human Rights is critical for this implementation phase.

It is crucial that athletes be part of the decision-making processes involved in the Centre for it to succeed, as they are the heart of sport and its mega-events.  This is in the best interests of sport and the best interests of the events.

“Players know that people come to the events to watch them compete and perform,” Alford said. “That’s why they want their voices to be heard in planning and delivering these events—not only for their own sake, but also because players have a role to play in standing up for others affected by the games.” 

Need for Recognition of Players and Athletes Rights and Representation

World Players has been approached by the IOC and WADA in their efforts to develop a set of standards and principles on safeguarding the human rights of athletes, which must be based on international human rights law and labour rights standards.

“This is an opportunity,” Schwab said, “to build on the years of work we've dedicated to ensuring the rights of players are legally embedded in world sports law in a meaningful way.”

As World Players has previously made clear, athletes will no longer tolerate the scenario in which there are thousands of pages that detail their obligations, but none that set out their rights in a coherent way.  World Players is keenly focused on this going into 2018.  These are fundamental issues. If child athletes aren’t safe, if women athletes are harassed and systematically excluded, if the well-being of players is ignored, if the basic right to access to justice is trampled on, we are failing at a fundamental level. 

Read the full Joint Statement of the Mega-Sporting Events Platform for Human Rights here.

Background

The World Players Association represents the collective voice of more than 85,000 professional players, spanning more than 100 player associations in over 60 countries.  As founding members of the Steering Committee of the Mega-Sporting Events Platform on Human Rights, World Players has been deeply involved in over two years of talks with international organisations, governments, sports bodies, athletes, hosts, sponsors, broadcasters, civil society representatives, trade unions, and employers to embed the fundamental principles of human dignity, human rights, and labour rights in the world of sport. Throughout 2017, World Players also co-chaired the Platform’s Task Force on Affected Groups and participated in the Task Force on Sports Governing Bodies. 

In July 2017, World Players released the World Player Rights Policy. Its adoption is the first step that world sport must take to legally uphold the human rights and labour rights of players, act proactively to respect them, and ensure access to a remedy for those whose rights are violated.  Likewise, World Players has released its Declaration on Safeguarding the Rights of Child Athletes and its Gender Equality Principles.  In December 2017, World Players will unveil a declaration on behalf of its more than 100 player associations affiliates, setting out how international human rights and labour rights norms and laws apply to players as people first and also as workers.