Human Rights Risk Mitigation in the Sports Context

Despite commitments from a number of the leading sports governing bodies to include human rights in future bidding processes for events, there is presently no mega-sporting event (MSE) in the pipeline that was awarded hosting status premised on explicit human rights commitments, beyond limited criteria touching on labour standards in the supply chain and broader questions of non-discrimination. The timescale for putting such measures is evolving, but even if and when human rights measures are in place, not all adverse impacts caused by the lifecycle of developing and delivering an event will be preventable. The various sections of this paper draw a number of conclusions and propose a series of recommendations, especially with regard to the potential function of an independent centre of expertise on MSEs and human rights.