The Human Rights Responsibility of Sports Associations

The legal framework of business and human rights could be directly applied to those purely commercial sports organizations, but it excludes sports associations. Sports associations may pose a threat to the enjoyment of human rights due to their organizational powers. International human rights discourse attempts to solve the problems caused by the autonomy of sports. FIFA and some other sports organizations are committed to respecting and promoting human rights on their own initiative. A general idea of the human rights responsibility of sports organizations could be established on the basis of the legal doctrine of the horizontal effects of human rights. A sports association is obliged to respect and to protect human rights, and may also have the obligation to fulfill human rights on a voluntary basis. The human rights responsibility of sports associations can be enforced not only through traditional sports arbitration and judicial review regimes, but also by recourse to the emerging business and human rights arbitration mechanism.