Two frightening pandemics – the worldwide spread of COVID-19 and police violence against minorities in many countries – have dominated the headlines this Olympic year. They both undermine the promise of human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the United Nations in 1948.¹  Because of the inequality and inadequacy of health care, a basic human right, the poor, persons of colour and persons with disabilities have suffered disproportionately from the virus. Because of the growing xenophobia of recent times and the racist legacy of slavery and colonialism, police in many countries have brutalised Indigenous People and other ethnic minorities, persons of colour, migrants and sexual minorities, denying their basic human rights to safety and security of person.Both crises present unprecedented threats to the Olympic Movement. COVID-19 has forced the cancellation of training and countless competitions, including the 2020 Olympic Games. The uncertain possibilities of contagion undermine the playing together and fraternisation that forms the very basis of sport, while the inequalities and inadequacies of public health further accentuate inequalities in sporting opportunities. The widespread police violence against those who are considered “the Other” undermines the most precious values of Olympic sport. The Olympic Movement has always promised dignity and respect to all and the celebration of diversity.Not surprisingly, many athletes, coaches and sports leaders have spoken out on these issues. Olympic athletes in several countries first called upon the Inter national Olympic Committee (IOC) to postpone the 2020 Olympics to give priority to public health. They said that despite their Olympic dreams, they would not travel to Tokyo during an emergency that threatened every person’s life.² Prominent athletes have testified about their own mistreatment by racist police. They have broken from the long tradition of “sport and politics do not mix” to join the calls for police reform and social change, arguing that it is their human right to do so.³ A worldwide discussion is currently underway about the extent to which the IOC should relax Rule 50, which prohibits political demonstrations in Olympic venues, to allow for peaceful protests in support of human rights.⁴ How should the Olympic Movement uphold human rights in these turbulent times? What lessons can we draw from previous achievements?In this lecture, I will argue that the modern Olympic Movement has con- tributed to the realisation of human rights in many important aspects of sport, sometimes at its own initiative, sometimes in response to outside pressures. I will also argue that while its priority is sports and culture, the Olympic Movement cannot limit its concern to those activities, but must sometimes be prepared to intervene in the basic conditions of the societies in which it takes part. These are such times. I will conclude by raising five concerns for the uncertain months ahead.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

The Olympic Movement and the human rights tradition

From its origins in the late 19th century, the modern Olympic Movement established by Pierre de Coubertin anticipated the formal declaration of human rights by the United Nations in 1948. It sought to “place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Implicit in its ambition was the belief in a common, universal humanity. At a time when the European countries were competing for colonies and arming for war, Coubertin promoted Olympic sport as a strategy of international, intercultural communication and exchange. He intended that the respect and friendship sports encourage would help develop an international movement within civil society that could serve as a preventative to war.⁵ For the most part, Coubertin, his colleagues and successors in the IOC pursued humanitarian internationalism in persistent, courageous ways. In 1936, IOC President Henri Baillet Latour forced Hitler to take down anti-Semitic signs at the Winter Olympic and Olympic Games in Germany, and recognise Jewish athletes entered by their respective National Olympic Committees (NOCs). Throughout the Cold War, IOC leaders compelled reluctant host countries to admit IOC-recognised delegations, even those from countries they did not recognise.⁶ On the other hand, the IOC was extremely slow to recognise, let alone provide equitable opportunities for women, and to give equal representation to leaders from the newly independent countries from the Global South. The original idea was to appoint one or two new IOC members for every new nation, but once those nations came from Africa, Asia or the Caribbean, the idea was dropped. In 1976, there were 45 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in Africa, but only seven IOC members from the continent. To this day, almost twice as many IOC members come from Europe than any other region.⁷ During the last half century, many Games have been occasions for humanitarian and human rights initiatives. Since 1992, the IOC has worked with the  United Nations every Olympiad to renew the classical Olympic Truce with a United Nations Resolution calling upon all member governments to end hostilities for the period of the Games.⁸ In 2004, the Olympic Torch Relay to the Athens Games promoted the Truce. While such statements are largely symbolic, they are an important reminder of the extent to which armed conflicts continue to kill, maim and displace millions of people, and thus deny their basic human rights.At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, the IOC created the Refugee Olympic Team, ten athletes drawn from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Syria, and South Sudan, to give visibility to the plight of the world’s 80 million refugees and dramatise their rights to dignity and opportunities.⁹ Yet the IOC has had to be pushed to recognise or extend human rights to women and other disadvantaged groups. Sometimes this occurred through meetings and diplomacy, sometimes with dramatic protests. It was only as a result of the African-led walkouts from the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, in protest against a New Zealand rugby tour of apartheid South Africa, that the IOC and the major international federations (IFs) fully embraced the international campaign against racism and apartheid in sports. The campaign contributed significantly to the eventual abolition of apartheid in the early 1990s and led the IOC to an explicit commitment to the language of human rights.¹⁰ In 2014, the worldwide protest against the repression of sexual minorities in Russia at the time of the Olympic Winter and Paralympic Games in Sochi persuaded the IOC to include “sexual orientation” as a protected category of the anti-discrimination clause of the Olympic Charter. It now requires all host cities to protect LGBT and other human rights in the staging of the Games. As Dikaia Chatziefstathiou and Ian Henry have argued, the IOC’s entire history of dealing with difficult social issues can be understood as a series ofinitiatives and adaptations in the context of world events.¹¹ Three factors have enabled a more consistent approach to human rights. First, the moral claims of sport, especially the precept of “fair play”, compel the IOC to treat all persons fairly. Second, the representational status of sport, by which athletes are seen to symbolise entire cultural groups and nations, highlights the issues of identity and inclusion. Thirdly, the United Nations specifically mentions sports in its human rights conventions, including the International Conventions on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), on Rights of the Child (1989) and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2007).Today, the Olympic Charter proclaims that “the practice of sports is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind.” The IOC is currently redoubling its efforts to realise gender equality in the provision of sports and events, in leadership, and in its media coverage.¹² The IOC now recognises every national community in the world, and includes participants of every class, gender, and racial and Indigenous background, and through its partnership with the International Paralympic Committee, participants with disabilities. It “puts its money where its mouth is” by spending most of its revenue, through Olympic Solidarity, on sport development around the world. These are inspiring commitments. But there is no single effective mechanism to ensure that human rights are respected and protected across the sporting world.    

Overcoming “non-intervention”                                                                          

‍For much of its history, the IOC has followed the “principle of non-intervention” when it comes to the internal affairs of IFs, NOCs and countries hosting the Olympic Games, even if it has meant turning a blind eye to the abuse of human rights. On the eve of the 1968 Olympics, the IOC remained silent when the Mexican government massacred more than 300 students peacefully protesting what they felt was the distorted priority given to international sport instead of education, health care and housing. In 2008 and 2016, it ignored human rights abuses in Beijing and Rio. The IOC always justified such non-intervention as necessary to realise the overarching priority of engaging the entire, diverse world in intercultural communication and exchange, especially during difficult times. It would be impossible to achieve such dialogue, it argued, if it restricted membership or the hosting of Games to those of liberal-democratic views. It held this position through more than a century of bitter conflicts, challenges to  the recognition of NOCs, including those from Israel and Palestine, the Soviet Union, the two Germanys, the two Koreas, China and Taiwan, and the boycotts of many Games. The “low threshold” ensured an accessible tent, enabling 206 NOCs to be recognised, and the Games to be held on every continent, no mean achievement. For much of the 20th century, it also reflected the international consensus around non-intervention in the domestic affairs of nation states. On the other hand, critics like John Hoberman of the University of Texas contend that the IOC practices “amoral universalism”. ¹³ In recent years, the international community has begun to move away from the principle of non-intervention towards the ideas of the humanitarian responsibility to protect. The world is no longer prepared to ignore what happens within nation states, nor let non-governmental organisations like the IOC off the hook.¹⁴ In 2018, the Council of Europe, the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch and a coalition of sports bodies calling themselves Mega-Sporting Events Platform for Human Rights urged the IOC to make human rights, labour standards and anti-corruption measures central to the staging of the Olympic Games. In 2020, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that international sports bodies fail to protect their members’ human rights and recommended that “sporting bodies should commit themselves to protecting and respecting internationally recognised human rights.” ¹⁵ The beginnings of such an approach are now underway. Ever since the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the IOC has monitored environmental or sustainability compliance in conjunction with Games, it has begun to collect participation data from around the world and it has become much more transparent in its own governance and financial transactions. Several bid cities have volunteered equity or human rights goals. ¹⁶ In the bidding for the 2026 Men’s World Cup (of football), bid cities were required to provide an analysis of the extent of human rights in the cities where the games will take place and develop a plan to safeguard and strengthen those rights in the build-up and staging of the tournament. ¹⁷ In 2017, the IOC included reference to human rights with respect to the host city contract for the very first time.¹⁸ The “new norm” for staging Games requires organising committees beyond 2024 to comply with applicable national and international laws and agreements with respect to facility construction, the environment, health and safety, labour and anti-corruption. Yet the mechanism for ensuring compliance remains unclear. As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently reported, the Court of Arbitration for Sport is inadequate to the challenge. If one party to an arbitration declares that it has no responsibility for human rights, as World Athletics did in the case of Caster Semanya, then CAS has no authority to protect those rights.

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Towards Tokyo 2021

‍At the time of writing, it remains uncertain if and when international sporting activity will resume and whether it can be done with the full delegations and spectators that make it the joyous, intercultural occasion that the Olympic Movement has always cherished. It is unclear whether it will be possible to hold the now postponed Tokyo Olympic Games, and under what conditions.Five issues related to human rights concern me. First, it should not only be the conditions in Japan that determine whether “the Games should go on”, but the conditions for everyday life and sporting activity in every country in the world. It would be completely unfair if the ongoing threat of contagion and the grossly unequal health capacities in many countries prevents some Olympic contenders from participation. Much depends upon the development of an effective vaccine against COVID-19 and its worldwide distribution. It will be imperative for the IOC to work with the World Health Organization and supportive NGOs to ensure universal coverage. Without such distribution, it will be very difficult for the IOC to allow the Games to go ahead. Second, at this time of growing xenophobia, escalating conflict and racist police violence, when hate-mongering about the origins and spread of the virus have unleashed new attacks on the “Other” in many parts of the world, it is time for the IOC to give renewed emphasis to the spirit of Olympism and internationalism and intercultural understanding.As someone who competed in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, I fear that spirit has been lost in the global medal race and the understandable concern about costs, performance enhancing drugs and security. Instead of going to an Olympics to engage with athletes from other countries and learn about another culture, athletes fly in for their events, compete, and go home. As long ago as the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, I did a study of the extent to which Canadian athletes participated in the Olympic spirit, and found that very few did. “I could have competed in Don Mills (a suburb of Toronto) for all that I learned about Korea”, one prominent athlete told me.¹⁹ The focus on performance to theexclusion of everything else is even stronger today Semanya, then CAS has no authority to protect those rights. I am confident that if the Games were repositioned as a celebration of Olympism, it would not take away from the athleticism of the Games.The world needs a vibrant, renewed Olympism today. Thirdly, the IOC, the Athletes’ Commission and athlete leaders from around the world need to come to a mutual understanding about the place of protest in the Olympic Games. In 2019, two US athletes, fencer Race Imboden and hammer thrower Gwen Berry, were reprimanded for antiracist actions on the podium at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru. Since then, athletes in many countries have indicated their willingness to mount similar protests. It would be a tragedy if there was a repeat of 1968, when US men’s 200-metre gold and bronze medallists Tommie Smith and John Carlos, supported by Australian silver medallist Peter Norman, gave a “Black Power” salute from the victory podium to protest racism. Smith and Carlos were immediately expelled from the Games, and lost their opportunities to compete in their remaining events. Norman was subsequently punished in Australia.The protest was remarkably effective. In a very short time, it had the effect of eradicating overt racism from US sports. But the expulsions gave the world the impression that the Olympic Movement was complicit in racism. At the moment, there is no effective mechanism to address violations of human rights within the Olympic Movement. It would be a useful safeguard if athletes were able to use the occasion of Olympic Games to protest such violations within Olympic sport. Fourthly, the IOC should reassure the women of the world that it will not administer any form of sex test for the Tokyo Games. Throughout its long, tragic history, the sex test has been used to denigrate, exclude, and in a few documented cases, coerce healthy athletes from the Global South into completely unnecessary, crippling surgery because they did not conform to the European ideal body type. In some countries, the very existence of the test has been used to expel female athletes from sports, deny them benefits, and forcethem into poverty. Currently, the only form of the female sex test that seems to be in play is the one that World Athletics president Seb Coe has spearheaded to drive double Olympic champion Caster Semanya from the sport. That test, which bans female athletes with a high amount of natural testosterone in the five events Semanya runs, is being challenged in the Swiss Federal Court. But other international federations such as FIFA have “gender verification” policies on their books. There is no scientific, legal or ethical basis for such tests.²⁰ Fifthly, the IOC and the Tokyo Organising Committee should ensure that the promised transparent monitoring of human rights in the building up and staging of the Games actually takes place. I have no indication that this will not happen, but COVID-19 has given governments everywhere an excuse for arbitrary decisions. Activists fear that abuses will occur in employment, housing, the procurement of uniforms and supplies, and environmental protections. Comprehensive monitoring for compliance with human rights would be a welcome step forward in the staging of Games.These are challenging times for human rights in the Olympic Movement. They require careful analysis and broad discussion. The IOA has always been a place where such analysis and discussion can take place, away from the glare of the media, among people who share the Olympic values. I trust that in the changed circumstances of a virtual Academy, we can still have such discussions.              

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1 United Nations, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html                                                                                                                             

2 Devin Heroux, “Canadian athletes will not compete at Tokyo 2020 Olympics due to COVID-19 risks”, CBC Sports, 22 March 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/canadian-olympic-committee-tokyo-2020-ioc-1.5506291; “With sport and medicine worlds colliding, Hayley Wickenheiser spoke hertruth to the IOC”, CBC Sports, 27 March 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/hayley-wickenheiser-had-to-speak-out-for-olympic-postponement-1.551217; and Peter Donnelly, “We are the Games; the COVID-19 pandemic and athletes' voices”, Sociología del deporte (Sd) Vol. 1 s Número 1 s Junio 2020 s pp. 311-326.

3E.g., TRT World, “Athletes unite in support of US protests after George Floyd killing”, 1 June 2020, https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/athletes-unite-in-support-of-us-protesters-after-george-floyd-killing-36838.

4 Donna Spencer and Lori Ewing, “IOC to begin talks about easing protest ban at the Olympics”, Canadian Press, 10 June 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/ioc-talk-protest-ban-olympics-1.5606372                                                                            

5 John MacAloon, This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

6 Bruce Kidd and Peter Donnelly, “Human rights in sports”, International Review for the Sociology of Sports, 35 (2), 2000, pp. 131-148.

7 Barbara Keys, “The Early Cold War Olympics 1952-1960: Political, Economic and Human Rights Dimensions”, in H. Lenskyj and S. Wagg (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 76.            

8 E.g., Rory Jiwani, “United Nations Adopts Tokyo 2020 Olympic Truce Resolution”, 9 December 2020, https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/stories/news/detail/united-nations adopts-tokyo-2020-olympic-truce-resolution.

9 United Nations High Commission for Refugees, “Rio 2016: Olympic Refugee Team”, https://www.unhcr.org/rio-2016-refugee-olympic-team.html

10 Mihir Bose, Sporting colours: sport and politics in South Africa (London: Robson, 1994).

11 Chatziefstathiou and Henry, Discourses of Olympism: From the Sorbonne 1894 to London 2012. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.                                                                                                                                

12 International Olympic Committee, Gender Equality Review Project, “Recommendations”, 12 October 2017, Lausanne.     

13 Hoberman, The Olympic Crisis: Sports, Politics and the Olympic Order (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide Caratzas, 1986).

14 Jennifer Welsh, “From Right to Responsibility: Humanitarian Intervention and International Society”. Global Governance 8 (4), 2002, pp. 503–521.                                                                                             

15 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Intersection of race and gender discrimination in sports”, United Nations Human Rights Council, 15 June 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session44/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session44/Documents/A_HRC_44_26_AEV.docx&action=default&DefaultItemOpen=1.

16 E.g., Bruce Kidd, “The Toronto Olympic Commitment: Towards a Social Contract for the Olympic Games”, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, 1 (1), 1991, pp. 154-167.

17 Canada, Mexico and United States Bid to Host the 2026 FIFA World Cup. (2018). “Human Rights and Labor Standards”, Section 23, pp. 454-464, https://img.fifa.com/image/upload/w3yjeu7dadt5erw26wmu.pdf.

18 Stine Alvad, “IOC includes human rights in Host City contract”, Play the Game, 1 March 2017. http://www.playthegame.org/news/news-articles/2017/0281_ioc-includes-human-rights-requirements-in-host-city-contract/.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

19 Bruce Kidd, “ ‘Seoul to the World, the World to Seoul’ ... and Ben Johnson: Canada at the 1988 Olympics”, in Koh Byong-Ik (Ed.), Toward One World Beyond All Barriers (Seoul: Poong Nam, 1990), Vol. 1, pp. 434-454.                                                             

20 Bruce Kidd, “Towards responsible policy-making in international sport: reforming the medical commissions”, Sport in Society, 21 (5), 2018, pp. 773-787.                                                                                                                                                              

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Bibliography

Stine Alvad, “IOC includes human rights in Host City contract”, Play the Game, 1 March 2017. http://www.playthegame.org/news/news-articles/2017/0281_ioc-includes-human-rights-requirements-in-host-city-contract/}/.

Mihir Bose, Sporting colours: sport and politics in South Africa (London: Robson, 1994).

Canada, Mexico and United States Bid to Host the 2026 FIFA World Cup. (2018). “Human Rights and Labor Standards”, Section 23, pp. 454-464, https://img.fifa.com/image/upload/w3yjeu7dadt5erw26wmu.pdf.

Dikaia Chatziefstathiou and Ian Henry, Discourses of Olympism: From the Sorbonne 1894 to London 2012. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Peter Donnelly, “We are the Games; the COVID-19 pandemic and athletes’ voices”, Sociología del deporte (Sd) vol. 1 s Númuero 1 s Junio 2020 s pp. 311-326.

Devin Heroux, “Canadian athletes will not compete at Tokyo 2020 Olympics due to COVID-19 risks”, CBC Sports, 22 March 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/canadian-olympic-committee-tokyo-2020-ioc-1.5506291;

Devin Heroux, “With sport and medicine worlds colliding, Hayley Wickenheiser spoke her truth to the IOC”, CBC Sports, 27 March 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/hayley-wickenheiser-had-to-speak-out-for-olympic-postponement-1.5512175.

John Hoberman, The Olympic Crisis: Sports, Politics and the Olympic Order (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide Caratzas, 1986).

International Olympic Committee, Gender Equality Review Project, “Recommendations”, 12 October 2017, Lausanne.

Rory Jiwani, “United Nations Adopts Tokyo 2020 Olympic Truce Resolution”, 9 December 2020, https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/stories/news/detail/united-nations-adopts-tokyo-2020-olympic-truce-resolution.

Barbara Keys, “The Early Cold War Olympics 1952-1960: Political, Economic and Human Rights Dimensions”, in H. Lenskyj and S. Wagg (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 76.

Bruce Kidd, “The Toronto Olympic Commitment: Towards a Social Contract for the Olympic Games”, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, 1 (1), 1991, pp. 154-167.

Bruce Kidd, “`Seoul to the World, the World to Seoul’ ... and Ben Johnson: Canada at the 1988 Olympics”, in Koh Byong-Ik (Ed.), Toward One World Beyond All Barriers (Seoul: Poong Nam, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 434-454.

Bruce Kidd, “Towards responsible policy-making in international sport: reforming the medical commissions”, Sport in Society, 21 (5), 2018, pp. 773-787.

Bruce Kidd and Peter Donnelly, “Human rights in sports”, International Review for the Sociology of Sports, 35 (2), 2000, pp. 131-148.

John MacAloon, This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

Donna Spencer and Lori Ewing, “IOC to begin talks about easing protest ban at the Olympics”, Canadian Press, 10 June 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/ioc-talk-protest-ban-olympics-1.5606372.

TRT World, “Athletes unite in support of US protests after George Floyd killing”, 1 June 2020,  https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/athletes-unite-in-support-of-us-protesters- after-george-floyd-killing-36838.

United Nations, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Intersection of race and gender discrimination in sports”, United Nations Human Rights Council, 15 June 2020,https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session44/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session44/Documents/A_HRC_44_26_AEV.docx&action=default&DefaultItemOpen=1.

United Nations High Commission for Refugees, “Rio 2016: Olympic Refugee Team”, https://www.unhcr.org/rio-2016-refugee-olympic-team.html.

Jennifer Welsh, “From Right to Responsibility: Humanitarian Intervention and International Society”. Global Governance 8 (4), 2002, pp. 503–521.