Reforming Legal Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Global Sports
From the deadly worksites of Qatar to the mass surveillance of Beijing, the modern sports mega-event has become not only a celebration of athletic excellence but also a manifestation of unchecked power and legal impunity. Behind the luxurious stadiums and global broadcasts are migrant laborers dying in silence and communities displaced with no recourse. International governing bodies like FIFA and the IOC operate as private, nonprofit associations based in Switzerland. The jurisdictional choice enables them to profit from mega-events while avoiding the reach of binding legal mechanisms. The international legal system has failed to prevent these abuses, and with absent meaningful reform, it will continue to do so [1].
This article argues that international law, corporate accountability frameworks, and labor laws must be reformed to close the legal gaps that currently allow these large, unaccountable institutions to escape liability. This piece focuses on how these specific legal frameworks have failed, what reforms could impose real obligations, and what hurdles stand in the way of enforcement. Ultimately, global sporting events must reflect the values of dignity, fairness, and justice they so prominently promote, and in order to do this, the law must evolve to hold these institutions accountable.
I. Structural Immunity and Systemic Abuse
FIFA and the IOC operate as Swiss-based private non-profit associations that are granted extensive legal protection. Being in Switzerland, a neutral country with little interference in international disputes, further shields them from external interference and scrutiny. These institutions are exempt from human rights treaties that hold states accountable, and host countries typically grant these institutions contractual immunities such as tax exemption, freedom from local labor laws, and limited legal liability. This confluence of legal privileges facilitates widespread accountability evasion [2].
In Qatar, the kafala labor system facilitated modern-day indentured servitude. Migrant workers had their passports confiscated, wages withheld, and were forced to work in inhumane conditions, often leading to death [3]. These abuses persist, and although FIFA awarded Qatar the World Cup and oversaw key infrastructure timelines, it has faced no legal liability. The abuses were not incidental; they were both foreseeable and preventable. FIFA operates outside the jurisdiction of most national courts. Qatar’s legal system, like those of many other mega-events hosts, does not afford access to independent remedies. The absence of extraterritorial jurisdiction and the failure of host country legal systems jointly contribute and sustain FIFA’s de facto impunity.
II. Why Voluntary Human Rights Standards Are Not Enough
Organizations like FIFA and the IOC often tout their endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) as evidence of their ethical commitments. But these principles are voluntary and therefore non-binding. The IOC continues to partner with authoritarian regimes despite clear documentation of systemic abuse, including China’s internment of Uyghurs and surveillance of Olympic participants [4].
The problem is not the absence of norms; it is their lack of enforceability.. There is no mechanism to compel FIFA or the IOC to conduct meaningful human rights due diligence, let alone provide remedies. These organizations routinely subcontract responsibilities to host governments with poor human rights records and invoke neutrality when abuse occurs [5]. Even when human rights policies exist, enforcement is largely performative. Few events involve independent monitoring, violations incur no meaningful penalties, and compliance is tied to public image rather than binding obligation. This has led to a credibility gap where sports bodies make ethical claims without legal follow-through. To address human rights risks meaningfully, soft law frameworks must either be made into binding treaty mechanisms or replaced with domestic or regional legal statutes that impose enforceable consequences.
III. Corporate Due Diligence and Legal Responsibility in Global Sports
Recent innovations in corporate law may provide a path forward. Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act mandates that companies identify and mitigate human rights risks across their operations [6]. Similarly, the European Union’s proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive would impose mandatory due diligence requirements on large companies operating in high-risk sectors. Although these laws currently target for-profit corporations, they offer a model for extending liability to transnational nonprofits such as FIFA and the IOC.
These organizations generate substantial commercial revenue through media rights, sponsorships, and licensing. Their corporate partners, including Coca-Cola, Adidas, and Visa, could be required to ensure human rights compliance in all event-related activities [7]. Lawsuits under these statutes have already emerged. In France, TotalEnergies was sued under the Duty of Vigilance Law for alleged complicity in human rights violations in Uganda [8]. While the case remains ongoing, it signals an increasing willingness to hold multinational enterprises liable for abuses linked to their operations.
The challenge is that many due diligence laws explicitly exempt nonprofit associations, thereby shielding them from scrutiny. This limits the applicability of current legislative frameworks and creates a two-tiered system of responsibility: one for commercial actors and another for nonprofit behemoths that often function with commercial aims. Reforming these laws to expressly include nonprofit organizations engaged in international commerce, such as FIFA and the IOC, would close this accountability gap.
Critically, corporate due diligence provides a forward-looking model of liability requiring that organizations act to prevent violations rather than merely respond once they occur. The theoretical basis here lies in the evolving understanding of complicity under international law, wherein the failure to take adequate preventive steps can amount to a breach of duty. In contrast, strategic litigation, while powerful, remains reactive. Cases like Oguru v. Shell and Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya demonstrate how courts have recognized extraterritorial jurisdiction and extended liability beyond borders. However, litigation is time-consuming, expensive, and often inaccessible to those most harmed [9].
Among the evaluated methods, due diligence laws promote legal clarity and foster behavioral adjustments through risk assessment and monitoring. Strategic litigation offers individualized justice and reputational consequences. Yet both mechanisms operate best when paired with international treaty regimes like the proposed Sporting Accountability Compact, which can integrate their strengths under a multilateral framework of enforcement and norm-setting.
IV. Evaluating Legal Alternatives and Addressing Key Counterarguments
Critics raise three main objections to expanding legal accountability: (1) that sports bodies are apolitical and should not interfere with sovereign affairs, (2) that these bodies lack the enforcement power to impose standards on host countries, and (3) that binding legal obligations could deter countries from bidding to host events.
The first objection misconceives the power dynamic. It is not sports bodies interfering with sovereignty, but sovereign states imposing accountability on sports bodies through domestic legislation and international treaty law. Furthermore, neutrality claims have already been challenged in case law. In O’Bannon v. NCAA and NCAA v. Alston, U.S. courts held that nonprofit sports bodies engaged in commercial activity are subject to antitrust and labor laws [10].
The second objection is that sports bodies lack enforcement capacity. This claim is undermined by existing practice and precedent. Hosting agreements already impose detailed contractual obligations related to infrastructure, branding, and security. There is no reason why similar legal terms could not extend to protection of human rights. FIFA and the IOC wield considerable leverage in selecting hosts and negotiating terms; they can demand compliance with labor standards and due diligence obligations.
The third concern is that legal obligations may discourage bids. The rationale for limiting accountability could appear pragmatic but the objections that incur collapse when paired with legal/practical scrutiny. This is speculative and ultimately hollow. Hosting is a privilege, not a right. The World Trade Organization and the European Union impose legal obligations on member states as a condition of participation. Sports bodies can do the same. Rather than deterring bids, robust legal frameworks could actually encourage more transparent, rights-respecting applications by reducing the risks of reputational fallout.
V. Evaluating Domestic Legal Reforms and Host Country Accountability
To achieve systemic accountability, sports bodies must reform the bidding process itself. Contracts between international sporting organizations and host countries should include enforceable legal clauses requiring adherence to international labor and human rights standards. These provisions should mandate independent monitoring, access to grievance mechanisms, and specific remedies for non-compliance.
In parallel, national governments should legislate minimum standards for participation in global sporting events. Scholars have proposed a “Foreign Human Rights Practices Act,” modeled on the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which would prohibit companies from participating in sports events that do not meet basic rights standards [11]. Violations could be punished with civil penalties, exclusion from contracts, or even criminal prosecution. Such a law would harness the extraterritorial reach of domestic statutes to police international abuse.
VI. Deep Evaluation of the Sporting Accountability Compact and Alternative Frameworks
The Sporting Accountability Compact (SAC) builds upon a growing consensus in legal scholarship that international non-state actors, especially those that exercise significant influence over public life, must be subject to binding legal obligations. At the theoretical level, this framework draws heavily on the doctrine of functional equivalence. This principle, which has gained traction in human rights law, argues that entities exercising state-like power should bear equivalent responsibilities. Sports governing bodies, by regulating labor practices, imposing media restrictions, and determining who has access to global platforms, demonstrably exercise such powers.
Further support for the SAC’s legal foundation comes from developments in transnational legal orders (TLOs). Legal theorist Terence Halliday defines TLOs as systems of law that operate across borders and are capable of producing, interpreting, and enforcing norms outside traditional state-centric frameworks [12]. Lex sportiva, the autonomous legal regime developed by organizations like the IOC and FIFA, is one such TLO. By subjecting these entities to international human rights and labor standards, the SAC would effectively constitutionalize lex sportiva, integrating public values into a transnational regime that has until now operated in a legal vacuum.
In practice, the SAC would mirror features of successful international treaties. Drawing from the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), the SAC would create an independent oversight body to monitor state and non-state actor compliance. It would require signatories to submit periodic human rights impact reports and allow for third-party complaints. Its tribunal, akin to the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Body, would issue binding decisions, ensuring enforceability.
Legal comparativists might also find echoes of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in this model. The SAC could allow individuals to bring claims directly to the tribunal if domestic remedies are unavailable or ineffective, similar to the individual petition system of the European Court of Human Rights. This would fill a crucial accountability gap and empower affected individuals, such as migrant workers and displaced communities, by granting them meaningful access to justice.
Finally, the SAC would advance the principle of positive obligations in international law. Traditionally, human rights frameworks focused on restraining state abuses. However, modern interpretations increasingly require proactive measures to prevent harm by third parties. In the context of mega-events, this means not only avoiding complicity in abuse but ensuring that robust protections are implemented from the outset. The SAC would codify this forward-looking obligation into an international legal instrument, requiring both sports bodies and host governments to act preventively, not just reactively, when rights are at risk.
By synthesizing principles of functional equivalence, transnational legal orders, individual petition rights, and positive obligations, the Sporting Accountability Compact would provide a comprehensive and enforceable legal foundation to regulate the human rights impacts of international sports governance.
Another promising yet underdeveloped alternative is the application of international investment law mechanisms. Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions, embedded in many bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, have historically been used by corporations to challenge state actions that harm their commercial interests. This model could be inverted: states or affected communities could bring counterclaims or treaty-based complaints against corporate actors, including sponsors and broadcasters, that materially contribute to human rights violations in connection with sporting events. Though controversial, the adaptation of ISDS mechanisms for human rights enforcement has been proposed by scholars as a way to leverage existing global legal infrastructure for accountability purposes [13].
Additionally, another complementary strategy could involve the use of public procurement law. Many global sports events are underwritten by public contracts for construction, security, and services. Conditioning eligibility for these contracts on compliance with human rights benchmarks, monitored by third-party auditors, could create powerful economic incentives for compliance. This would resemble the approach taken by some European states, which require human rights due diligence for suppliers bidding on government contracts.
These alternatives highlight a growing consensus: sports governance does not exist in a legal vacuum, and there are multiple legal disciplines (investment law, procurement law, labor law) that can be mobilized for accountability. The challenge is coordination. The SAC offers a vehicle for harmonizing these varied tools under a unified treaty framework, one that reflects the hybrid nature of global sport as both a commercial enterprise and a public good.
At this stage, the Sporting Accountability Compact (SAC) offers the clearest and most comprehensive solution. Modeled on the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), the SAC would transform voluntary human rights principles into binding international commitments. Member states would be required to adopt domestic legislation mandating human rights due diligence, labor protections, and access to remedies for all event-related activities.
The SAC would also create an independent tribunal with jurisdiction over human rights complaints tied to global sports, providing legal standing to workers, displaced communities, and NGOs. Like the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body, this tribunal would issue binding rulings enforceable across jurisdictions, ensuring that violations trigger meaningful penalties, from monetary sanctions and reputational damage to the suspension or withdrawal of hosting rights.
Critically, the SAC’s integration into the host city selection process would embed accountability at the front end of event planning. Countries would need to become SAC signatories and meet its legal standards before bidding, preventing governing bodies from selecting hosts with poor human rights records. This model not only echoes UNCAC’s blend of domestic implementation and international oversight but also draws from treaty regimes like the European Convention on Human Rights, where individuals can petition when domestic remedies are inadequate [14].
By institutionalizing these mechanisms, the SAC would elevate soft law principles like the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights into a binding global framework. In doing so, it would advance legal pluralism, harmonize transnational law with international human rights obligations, and finally constitutionalize what has long been an unregulated and often abusive global sports domain.
Conclusion
Global sports events are no longer innocent spectacles. They are billion-dollar enterprises tied to systemic abuse, made possible by legal loopholes, structural immunity, and toothless enforcement. Yet this outcome is not inevitable.
By reforming due diligence statutes, enforcing binding conditions on host countries, and creating a multilateral enforcement framework through the Sporting Accountability Compact, the international community can begin to hold global sports accountable. If fairness, dignity, and justice are the values sport purports to uphold, then those same values must be reflected in the laws that govern it. It is only through such reform that global sports can align its practices with the ideals of human rights that it publicly celebrates.
Endnotes
[1] David Conn, “Ten Years of Hurt: How the Guardian Reported Qatar’s World Cup Working Conditions,” The Guardian, November 19, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/nov/19/qatar-working-conditions-world-cup-guardian-reporting.
[2] Antoine Duval, “Lex Sportiva: A Playground for Transnational Law,” European Law Journal, August 2013, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2317826.
[3] Pete Pattisson, “Revealed: 6,500 Migrant Workers Have Died in Qatar Since World Cup Awarded,” The Guardian, February 23, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar-fifa-world-cup-2022.
[4] Human Rights Watch, “Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots”: China's Crimes Against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims, April 19, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting.
[5] John Ruggie, “For the Game. For the World. FIFA and Human Rights,” Harvard Kennedy School, April 2016, https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/mrcbg/programs/cri/files/Ruggie_humanrightsFIFA_reportApril2016.pdf.
[6] European Commission, “Proposal for a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence and annex,” February 23, 2022, https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/proposal-directive-corporate-sustainable-due-diligence-and-annex_en.
[7] Amnesty International, “Reality Check 2021: A Year to the World Cup – The State of Migrant Workers’ Rights in Qatar,” November 16, 2021, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde22/4966/2021/en/.
[8] Christophe Clerc, “The French Duty of Vigilance Law: Lessons for an EU Directive on Due Diligence in Multinational Supply Chains,” Business and Human Rights Journal, January 13, 2021, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3765288.
[9] European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), “Oguru v. Shell,” ECCHR Case Files, https://www.ecchr.eu/en/.
[10] National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, 594 U.S. ___ (2021).
[11] Claire Methven O’Brien, Amol Mehra, Sara Blackwell, and Cathrine Bloch Poulsen-Hansen, “National Action Plans: Current Status and Future Prospects for a New Business and Human Rights Governance Tool,” Business and Human Rights Journal, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-human-rights-journal/article/national-action-plans-current-status-and-future-prospects-for-a-new-business-and-human-rights-governance-tool/51687C20A72589C0D9A34B13F1790C15.
[12] Terence Halliday and Gregory Shaffer, “Transnational Legal Orders” in Transnational Legal Orders, ed. Terence Halliday and Gregory Shaffer (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 3–72.
[13] Adam H. Bradlow, “Human Rights Impact in ISDS: A Proposal for Enabling Private Parties to Bring Human Rights Claims Through Investor-State Dispute Settlement Mechanisms,” The Yale Journal of International Law 43, no. 2 (2018): 356, https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/6728/AdamHBradlowHumanRightsIm.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y.
[14] Council of Europe, “European Convention on Human Rights,” 1950, https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf.