Thursday 14 April 2016 18:12, UK
World Cups should be removed from countries who continue to flout human rights, a Harvard professor commissioned by FIFA to look into the issue has advised.
John Ruggie, who formulated business and human rights principles for the United Nations, was asked by FIFA to recommend how football's governing body can clean up its working practices and those of its partners.
But while pledging FIFA's commitment to human rights, new president Gianni Infantino has said the scandal-tainted governing body will only use Ruggie's 25 recommendations as a guide to its future work.
Before it was rocked by bribery scandals and the departure of Infantino's predecessor Sepp Blatter over the last year, FIFA had been criticised over the decision to award the 2010 World Cup to Qatar and over labour abuses in the Gulf nation.
Amnesty International recently implicated the building of a World Cup site, the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, Qatar, where some migrant workers were said to have faced abuse that amounted to forced labour.
Ruggie was commissioned by FIFA in response to concerns about the mistreatment of workers in Qatar and published his report on Thursday, after four months of research.
He said the organisation can do a lot more to protect people's rights.
Ruggie told The Associated Press that he was alarmed by the lack of awareness of human rights issues at FIFA "until something really smacks them in the face and then they scramble to respond."
His main recommendation is that FIFA should explicitly put a human rights requirement on countries when they bid to host one of its tournaments, and use its leverage to force countries to make changes or risk losing the showpiece event.
He also called for human rights experts to be at the top of FIFA's new management system.
"Where FIFA is unable to reduce severe human rights impacts by using its leverage, it should consider suspending or terminating the relationship," Ruggie said in his 42-page report.
"The foundational challenge for FIFA now is to go beyond putting words on paper and adding new administrative functions. What is required is a cultural shift that must affect everything FIFA does and how it does it.
"The result must be 'good governance' not merely 'good-looking governance.' To put it in the simplest terms, FIFA, the global football enterprise, must transform itself into a modern organization."
Ruggie told the AP: "As part of the bidding process, FIFA needs to do its own assessments of what the most salient human rights risks are in that particular bidding country.
"When it finds there are salient risks it needs to ask the host government what its plans are for mitigating those risks.
"If the plans for mitigating those risks are satisfactory then go ahead. If there are no plans for mitigating the risks then you move onto the next bidder."
Ruggie also raised rights issues in 2018 World Cup host Russia, including a law prohibiting gay "propaganda" implemented since the 2010 vote, fears over the abuse of migrant workers and the acquisition of land.
In response to the report, Infantino said: "FIFA is fully committed to respecting human rights.
"I would like to thank Prof Ruggie for his work in producing this report, which, together with FIFA's own analysis and ongoing work, will guide the way forward."
