Human Rights approach
FIFA embraces its responsibility to respect human rights across its operations and relationships.
Through its competitions and its activities to govern and develop football, FIFA generates jobs and investment in infrastructure, promotes the values of equality and fairness and strengthens social bonds among people and countries. This substantial impact brings with it a considerable amount of responsibility.
FIFA recognises its obligation to uphold the inherent dignity and equal rights of everyone affected by its activities. This responsibility is enshrined in article 3 of the FIFA Statutes, which reads as follows:
“FIFA is committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights and shall strive to promote the protection of these rights.”
FIFA’s Human Rights Policy elaborates on this statutory commitment and outlines FIFA’s approach to its implementation in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Since 2016, FIFA has built a strategic programme to embed respect for human rights across the organisation’s operations and relationships.
With respect to FIFA competitions, this programme involves measures such as:
integrating human rights requirements into bidding processes for competitions and as a factor in the subsequent selection of the hosts;
developing event-specific human rights risk assessments and risk mitigation strategies covering salient topics such as labour rights, anti-discrimination, press freedom and freedom of expression;
establishing and implementing grievance mechanisms and working to ensure remediation where adverse impacts have occurred; and
reporting on the due diligence steps taken.
Meanwhile, FIFA’s endeavours with respect to its role in governing and developing football include:
working with its member associations on the development and implementation of anti-discrimination action plans, as well as the promotion of disability football;
integrating human rights-related criteria for the provision of development funds to its member associations; and
embedding respect for the rights of players and other people involved in the game within the relevant regulations.
Throughout its work in this area, FIFA engages and collaborates closely with external human rights stakeholders.
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