A landmark human rights report by Professor John Ruggie has put greater pressure on FIFA to clean up its act ahead of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.The independent report by the former UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights was commissioned by FIFA in December 2015 amid allegations that the football governing body was contributing to a range of adverse human rights impacts across its global operations, including the death of migrant construction workers in Qatar...Hans Corell is Co-Chair of the IBA Human Rights Institute. ‘These recommendations mean that FIFA should include human rights within its criteria for evaluating bids to host tournaments and should make them a substantive factor in host selection,’ he says. ‘It is said this is about making decisions based on evidence of how effectively bidders intend to address human rights risks connected with the tournament,’ he adds. ‘It is not about pre-emptively excluding countries based on their general human rights context. Nevertheless, I take it for granted that there will be much more focus on the manner in which host states protect human rights. The question is whether notorious human rights violators should be accepted as hosts for tournaments.’...Akira Kawamura, former IBA President and member of the IAAF Ethics Board, says there are considerable challenges in getting international sports governing bodies to take action on human rights issues...Pieth, who has already grappled with the challenge of supervising FIFA’s reform, says ultimately actions from FIFA will speak louder than words. ‘Intellectually it’s not difficult, but the question is will they muster the clout to actually do it and enforce these good ideas.’