“Games–Time Human Rights Due Diligence”: A Case Study of FIFA’s Human Rights Volunteers Program at the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022

Abstract

The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 received an unprecedented amount of criticism from civil society and human rights organizations for the human rights risks and adverse human rights impacts related to organizing and staging the event. Interestingly, it was the first World Cup that was delivered with a team of human rights volunteers monitoring human rights issues at event venues on match days.1 Given the novelty of this project, this Article first informs about the FIFA human rights volunteers (HRV) program in general and second, it analyses to what extent it can be considered a concrete and practical example of an organization’s human rights due diligence (HRDD) and remedy efforts. As some of the broader business and human rights literature suggests, there seems to be a lack of practical examples of how corporations implement HRDD, making FIFA’s HRV program an exception worth studying.

Keywords

• Human rights
• human rights volunteers
• human rights due diligence
• remedy
• FIFA World Cup
• Centre for Sport and Human Rights
• United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights