Structural & governance flaws at FIFA contributed to "serious & systematic human rights abuses", says NGO FairSquare
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NGO FairSquare released a report in October 2024 identifying serious structural flaws within football's global governing body, FIFA, which it says have resulted in FIFA's contribution to serious and systematic human rights abuses.
The report - Substitute: The case for the external reform of FIFA - compares FIFA's governance practices before and after it said it had implemented a set of critical governance reforms in 2016. FairSquare finds these reforms have resulted in "little to no improvement" and instead in some areas the organisation has regressed. The report is based on over 100 interviews with individuals affected by FIFA's operations and a wide range of experts, including football administrators, human rights researchers, sociologists, economists, lawyers, experts in governance, corruption and tax.
Examples of rights abuses include serious due diligence failures, particularly in the run up to the Qatar 2022 World Cup, but also abuses elsewhere including mass evictions, the destruction of livelihoods, police abuse, extrajudicial killings and other violations of the right to life, forced labour, and physical, sexual and psychological abuse.
“FIFA is a commercial rights holder, a development organisation, a competition organiser, and a global regulator, all rolled into one big mess. Commercially, it’s a hugely successful organisation, but it has been grossly negligent in addressing the eye-watering list of human rights abuses linked to its operations, and from the perspective of the development of the game, most notably the development of the women’s game, it appears to be irredeemably dysfunctional.”Nick McGeehan, co-director of FairSquare and lead author
Particular governance issues highlighted by the report include:
- FIFA's inability to self-regulate effectively;
- A critical lack of transparency over how member associations spend FIFA's development funds distributed under the FIFA Forward Development Programme since 2016;
- The failure to publish independent external audits on all member associations, as committed since 2019;
- The granting of excessive executive powers to the FIFA President through the introduction of the Bureau of the Council to FIFA's governance structure in 2016; and,
- The undermining of independent oversight mechanisms including sacking the head of the Governance Committee in 2017 and dissolving an independent human rights advisory board in 2021.
FairSquare conclude by calling for a dedicated EU law on sport to impose the necessary governance to prevent further harm and "deliver on football's transformative potential". FIFA had not responded to a summary of the report's findings by publication.