13 October 2019
How an EU Directive on Access to a Lawyer Became a Weapon for Secret Arrests
Directive 2013/48/EU of 22 October 2013 ‘on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings’ had an unfortunate fate in Bulgaria. In particular, the transposition is troublesome because the government used the Directive as a pretext to revive a totalitarian practice – secret arrests. Continue reading >>
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07 July 2019
The protection of labour rights in professional football under the ICESCR
In this blog, I argue that the global operations of FIFA affecting the labour rights of individuals fall under the scope of the ICESCR and that FIFA’s responsibility for potential violations of these rights can be engaged. It could also form the basis for Switzerland’s international legal responsibility for a possible violation of a state’s obligation to protect. Continue reading >>
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07 July 2019
FIFA for Women or Women for FIFA? The Inherent Tensions of FIFA’s Women’s Football Strategy
How does FIFA purport to address and overcome its historical and ongoing record of institutional disregard for, and discrimination against, women? Its primary weapon appears to be the recently adopted Women’s Football Strategy, designed to “empower the organisation to take further concrete steps to address the historic shortfalls in resources and representation, while advocating for a global stand against gender discrimination through playing football”. This may seem an ambitious compound goal, seeking to advance gender equality within FIFA, football and beyond. But what promise does the Women’s Football Strategy actually hold in this regard? Continue reading >>
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06 July 2019
The European Court of Human Rights and FIFA: Current Issues and Potential Challenges
The aim of this post is to address the relevance of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights for FIFA. Continue reading >>
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06 July 2019
Is Bauer the new Bosman? – The implications of the recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union for FIFA
In its Bauer ruling the CJEU confirmed that the fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter might under certain circumstances become horizontally applicable. This post argues that this development of judgments has implications also for sport federations such as FIFA. Continue reading >>
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05 July 2019
Shared International Responsibility for Human Rights Violations: The 2022 World Cup in Qatar
Since Qatar won the hosting rights for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in 2010, recurrent human rights violations of migrants working on building or refurbishing new infrastructure for the tournament have been denounced. As football’s governing body, FIFA should have been aware of the risk that the organisation of the 2022 World Cup could entail human rights violations in the country. In this blog, I investigate how a migrant worker could engage the legal responsibility of the different actors involved in the organisation of the FIFA World Cup 2022. Continue reading >>
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05 July 2019
FIFA’s Eigen-constitutionalization and its limits
We argued that the explicit inclusion of human rights in FIFA ́s Statutes since April 2016 exemplifies how transnational sports law (lex sportiva) can undergo processes of eigen-constitutionalization that contribute to the protection of human rights. Yet, this protection can be effective only when coupled to regimes of reflexivity and enforceability. Continue reading >>
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04 July 2019
‘We need to talk about the kids’: FIFA’s children’s rights obligations
This blog explores children’s rights violations connected to FIFA’s activities and discusses the slightly disjointed approach taken to this area in the past which tended to be piecemeal, reactive and uncoordinated. Continue reading >>
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04 July 2019
FIFA and Human Rights: Introduction to the Symposium
In this blog we provide a brief introduction to the symposium by going through FIFA’s human rights impacts, policies, and responsibilities. Continue reading >>
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24 June 2019