Sport events and human rights: positive promotion or negative erosion?

Abstract

In this paper we build upon recent scholarship on sport event legacies to identify, categorise and describe the key processes underpinning sport event interactions with human rights. It develops a simple, representative model to illustrate the points where sport events bisect with human rights and considers what factors can modify these impacts. The development of this model is based on a meta-review of literature and examination of case studies. It is clear from our analysis that sport events are malleable, symbolic and political occurrences that can be positioned to provide evidence and support of benefice or harm to the cause of human rights. The model also provides a nuanced approach to consider how sport event organisers may begin to think about the tactics and strategies that might be employed how they might leverage human rights through their sport event. The model also indicates that Human Rights, being similarly malleable political tools, are paradoxical in application in the sport event context and consequently cannot be assumed to be taken-for-granted as event outcomes or outputs.

Pro-Environmental Behaviour of Attendees at a Major Sport Event in Cameroon

“…The hosting of major sport events has been intertwined with leveraging the inherent socio-economic, urban regeneration and tourism benefits (Bohlmann & Van Heerden, 2005;Davies, 2016;Xue & Mason, 2017;Hemmonsbey et al, 2018;Hemmonsbey & Tichaawa, 2018a,b;Tichaawa et al, 2018;Hemmonsbey & Tichaawa, 2019). As a result, an increasing number of countries are seeking to host large-scale sport events, with the impacts of major sport events having come under scrutiny, specifically regarding the realisation of the promised benefits (see Davies, 2010;Taks, 2013;Adams & Piekarz, 2015;Taks et al, 2015;Bell & Daniels, 2018). Increasingly, sport event sustainability has gained much prominence in the scholarly literature (Sotiriandou & Hill, 2015).…”

Human rights, leisure and leisure studies

“…David, 2005;Brackenridge et al, 2014) and the impacts of major sporting events on the housing of disadvantaged groups and freedom of speech and assembly in host communities (e.g. Adams & Piekarz, 2015;Lenskyj, 2008;Timms, 2012). The direct right to participate, enshrined in the 'Sport for All' slogan, is implicit in the campaigns against the South African apartheid system through sport boycotts in the 1980s (Booth, 2003), while Roche (2000, p.176) explores the related concept of rights which might be exercised through the communications media, expressed in the term 'TV sport for All'.…”

Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood? Lifestyle and adventure sports participation among Norwegian youth

“…It builds on the critical momentum generated by recent scholarly and journalistic reportage on a broad corpus of human rights issues at so-called 'mega-events' , particularly international sporting events such as the FIFA men's World Cup and the Olympic Games Horne, 2015;Jennings, 2011;Tomlinson, 2014). As Adams and Piekarz (2015) summarise, such reportage has broadly condemned the handling of human rights protections, revealing issues of community censorship, human displacement and trafficking, police brutality, housing rights, abject poverty, discrimination and labour exploitation. At its best, such work has mobilised the global media spotlight of mega events -'the eyes of the world' , in Lenskyj's (2010, p. 15) terms -as a platform on which to expose inadequate human rights protections, giving voice to marginalised or indigenous peoples and often motioning for public action towards state reform of governance and accountability.…”

“…For instance, work on sport and human rights (Donnelly, 2008;Giulianotti, 2004;Giulianotti & McArdle, 2006;Kidd & Donnelly, 2000;Schneider, 2004;Singh, 2002;Taylor, 2000), including youth sport (David, 2005) and sport [mega] events (Adams & Piekarz, 2015;Schofield, Rhind & Blair, 2017;Van Rheenen, 2014). Despite highlighting the right to participate in sport, and showing how sport can serve to promote human rights, authors also demonstrate how competitive sport endangers the rights of child and adult athletes in terms of their autonomy, privacy and civil liberties.…”