The Olympic Motion has just lately skilled its personal Habemus papam second. After a 12-year mandate, Thomas Bach introduced his intention to step down from his place as President of the Worldwide Olympic Committee (‘IOC’) this yr. A lot has been product of the secrecy and lobbying that accompanies the election and creates resemblances with the papal conclave. Coupled with the truth that seven candidates have been vying for the place of IOC President, the election promised to be an historic and extremely contested race. Opposite to some expectations, nonetheless, it proved a comparatively easy course of, with Kirsty Coventry securing the help of an absolute majority of electors within the very first spherical of voting. But, the result’s undoubtedly historic. Coventry is the primary girl to move the IOC in its 131-year historical past and takes the reins in a extremely difficult atmosphere for the organisation. On this publish, I critically analyse the implications of the election for the IOC’s function in international governance and for the organisation’s engagement with worldwide legislation. I spotlight the important thing geopolitical challenges going through the IOC, particularly across the organisation’s professed political neutrality and its relationship with worldwide legislation and different authorized regimes. I then study the manifesto of the newly elected president and counsel we may even see a brand new method with respect to 2 objects on the IOC’s worldwide agenda – its relationship to Russia and its place on the non-discrimination of transgender and intersex athletes.
1. (Generally) Taking the Aspect of the Worldwide Neighborhood: The IOC as a Stakeholder in World Governance
Though a lot of the IOC President’s tasks revolve round guaranteeing that the profitable Olympic equipment retains operating easily, the IOC can be enjoying an more and more essential function in relation to international governance and worldwide legislation. For the IOC President, this implies navigating a extremely polarised geopolitical atmosphere in a fashion that aligns with the organisation’s mission as enshrined within the Olympic Constitution. In accordance with Basic Precept 5 of the Constitution, all organisations inside the Olympic motion are politically impartial, together with the IOC. Committing to political neutrality, nonetheless, doesn’t imply that the actions of the IOC and its President are politically insignificant. The steps taken by the IOC with respect to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine illustrate this level. The organisation was among the many first worldwide actors to impose sanctions on Russia and Belarus, basing its choice on the states’ violation of the Olympic Truce. As Carmen Pérez famous, ‘[a]lmost instantly after the invasion of Ukraine passed off’, the IOC and different sports activities governing our bodies adopted choices that prevented worldwide sports activities competitions from happening in Russia and Belarus. Furthermore, as Patricia Wiater meticulously discusses right here and right here, the IOC constantly sought to dam the participation of athletes beneath the flag of the aggressor states to guard the rights of Ukrainian athletes.
The IOC President ‘represents the IOC and presides over all its actions’, and so takes a key function in driving the outward-looking, political behaviour of the organisation – one which the outgoing president Thomas Bach actively formed in relation to Russia via his ‘pragmatic, realpolitik method’. Certainly, in October 2023, the IOC intensified its stress on Russia by suspending the Russian Olympic Committee (‘ROC’), successfully excluding the physique from the Olympic Motion. This was prompted by the affiliation of 4 newly-established regional Olympic committees in occupied Ukrainian territory – in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia – to the ROC as members. Though Russia challenged the IOC’s choice earlier than the Courtroom of Arbitration for Sport (‘CAS’), the tribunal concurred with the IOC’s evaluation that the ROC’s choice to confess the regional committees contravened the Olympic Constitution. The panel famous that ‘if the worldwide neighborhood recognises the Areas as a part of Ukraine, then the ROC’s choice to confess sports activities organisations from these areas as members violated the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian [National Olympic Committee, as protected by the Olympic Charter]’.
The IOC has deftly used its personal governance regime and its references to the place of the ‘worldwide neighborhood’ – expressed via UN Common Meeting resolutions – to exert political stress on Russia. In doing so, the organisation takes a transparent geopolitical stance on Russia’s aggression in the direction of Ukraine. Nevertheless, the rift between the IOC and Russia doesn’t revolve solely round Ukraine. Outgoing IOC President Bach instructed that the outcry concerning the gender of boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting and their participation within the Paris 2024 Olympics was the results of a Russian faux information marketing campaign. In such a fraught international governance context, staying impartial is perhaps an impossibility for the IOC, with authors worrying that neutrality is honoured solely selectively, turning into an instrumental software used to attain particular targets reasonably than a ‘elementary precept of Olympism’. That is starkly underlined by the IOC’s choice to not impose any sanctions on Israel in the course of the 2024 Paris Olympics, regardless that Israel continued its offensive in the course of the interval of the Olympic Truce and regardless of widespread condemnation of the Israeli occupation of Gaza by the worldwide neighborhood.
2. 5 Rings to Rule Them All: Norm Translation on the IOC and Contestations of Authorized Authority
The IOC’s political neutrality additionally has implications for the on-going reassessment of the boundaries of sports activities governance, each with respect to its function inside society and extra particularly by way of the division of authorized authority. As regards the previous, the IOC and different sports activities governing our bodies have more and more confronted allegations of ‘sportswashing’ for organising competitions in nations that lack democratic authorities or the place issues exist about widespread human rights violations. Such issues should not restricted to the overall state of affairs inside a number nation however, as was notably the case with the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, can straight have an effect on the organisation of a contest. Along with elevating issues about press freedom and discrimination in opposition to girls and LBTQIA+ individuals in Qatar, rights teams have criticised FIFA for being complicit within the abuse of migrant staff employed on development websites for World Cup stadia or employed as safety guards. What sort of leverage must be utilized in these conditions by organisations reminiscent of FIFA or the IOC on host governments stays a contentious query, given they’re personal, for-profit entities. Nevertheless, civil society organisations typically place duty straight on presidents of sports activities governing our bodies for lack of motion on human rights issues.
On the similar time, we’re witnessing a reassessment of the boundaries of the authorized authority of sports activities governance our bodies in relation to different authorized regimes. Whereas the rising consideration to the function of sporting our bodies such because the IOC inside international governance extra typically is a significant cause for this improvement, I’d argue that two extra particular components are additionally essential drivers. First, the IOC particularly has positioned itself as a key personal ‘translator’ of worldwide authorized norms which more and more discover expression inside the inner governance framework of the organisation. Worldwide human rights legislation and sustainability requirements characterize the 2 fundamental areas the place translation has occurred, with each areas that includes closely within the IOC Strategic Framework on Human Rights and in current variations of the IOC’s bidding laws and Olympic internet hosting agreements. Nevertheless, as the sooner dialogue of sanctions highlighted, the IOC additionally depends on UN resolutions coping with safety and peace issues to tell its governance choices. Second, the IOC governance framework has undergone important juridification and constitutionalisation, crystallising a normative system that’s extra recognisably authorized. The cumulative impact of those processes is that the legal-regulatory boundaries of IOC governance, but in addition lex sportiva extra broadly, have turn out to be extra obvious and expanded outwards to incorporate issues that aren’t instantly regarded as inside the province of sport, reminiscent of financial or human rights points. This has, in flip, created extra alternatives for regulatory overlap and raised the opportunity of contesting the more and more juridified normative framework via judicial avenues. Notably, the upcoming CJEU choice in Seraing will probably be a significant alternative for the renegotiation of the boundaries of authorized authority between EU legislation and lex sportiva. Whereas the dispute arose after a authorized problem by RFC Seraing in opposition to sanctions imposed by FIFA for a violation of third-party possession guidelines, the CJEU case focuses on the burden to be attributed to awards by the CAS in subsequent authorized proceedings. The important thing query earlier than the CJEU is whether or not treating CAS awards as res judicata is in accordance with EU legislation provisions. As Duval highlights, the case may result in a significant re-evaluation of the ‘gentle contact supervision presently exercised’ over the CAS and convey sporting disputes again into home courts. The choice is sizzling on the heels of two additional CJEU circumstances regarding FIFA which characterize an assertion of EU legislation authority over sports activities ‘in as far as it constitutes an financial exercise’. Given the IOC’s central function in defending the regulatory autonomy of sports activities, such wholesale challenges to the bounds of sports activities governance will probably be influential in shaping the mandate of the brand new IOC President.
3. Simply How Transformative? Continuity and Change within the Agenda of New IOC President Kirsty Coventry
Within the greater than century-long historical past of the organisation, Coventry grew to become the primary girl to be elected, in addition to the primary president from exterior of Europe or the USA. On the similar time, nonetheless, she is extensively seen as a continuity alternative – Coventry has a powerful relationship with the outgoing IOC President Thomas Bach. It is going to be attention-grabbing to see whether or not the ‘continuity’ label will lengthen to the additional legalisation of the IOC, its engagement with worldwide legislation, and the positioning of the organisation inside international governance. Bayle highlights that Bach’s presidency was essential in implementing institutional adjustments inside the IOC to additional good governance via ‘ideas centred spherical better transparency, better gender equality, and higher management mechanisms’. Coventry’s manifesto, titled ‘Unleashing the Transformative Energy of Sport’, means that her mandate will proceed this course of with a give attention to collaboration with actors throughout the Olympic Motion. Equally, the IOC’s professed dedication to sustainability is unlikely to vary beneath the brand new president, with Coventry arguing that the IOC ‘ought to proceed partnering with the UN to strengthen our efforts’ on environmental and social duty. Certainly, the rhetoric of sustainability options closely inside her manifesto, though Coventry’s proposals are considerably much less detailed compared to the opposite presidential candidates. Whether or not generic references to ‘lead[ing] by instance’ and ‘championing sustainable practices’ will probably be ample to steer critics who accuse the IOC of making a ‘sustainability smokescreen’ is very uncertain.
Nevertheless, on some problem areas referring to worldwide legislation, Coventry appears to be shifting the IOC’s present course. Coventry doubled down on the IOC’s political neutrality in her manifesto, stating that the organisation ‘should stay impartial and never co-opted for political agendas’. Furthermore, in an interview after her election, she made clear her opposition to banning nations which can be concerned in conflicts from the Olympics and careworn the need of a collective dialog about readmitting Russia to the 2026 Winter Olympics. Though this may seem as a turnaround within the IOC’s positioning vis-à-vis nations undermining worldwide peace and safety, it’s reasonably a return to the norm. In spite of everything, the IOC didn’t reply to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, which occurred only some days after the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics concluded, and stays stubbornly oblivious to Israel’s marketing campaign in Gaza. By re-asserting the IOC’s neutrality and de-escalating its place in the direction of Russia, Coventry could keep away from future allegations of double requirements – however solely at the price of compromising its dedication to selling peace.
Equally, we may even see adjustments in how the IOC approaches the eligibility of intersex and transgender athletes within the girls’s class – arguably, sport’s main human rights subject at current. Coventry has repeatedly said that defending feminine athletes is a significant precedence, which is usually coded language for the exclusion of male-to-female transgender athletes from the ladies’s class. Certainly, Coventry has indicated help for a complete ban to this impact. The present IOC Framework addressing this matter leans in the direction of an inclusive and non-discriminatory method, emphasising that ‘standards must be established and applied pretty and in a fashion that doesn’t systematically exclude athletes from competitors primarily based upon their gender identification, bodily look and/or intercourse variations’. Nevertheless, the framework serves solely as a advice, provided that the precise eligibility laws are inside the remit of particular person sports activities federations, and has had little impression on the method of mentioned federations who are likely to systematically exclude transgender and intersex athletes. One instance of such laws adopted by World Athletics and relevant to intersex athletes has been challenged earlier than the European Courtroom of Human Rights. In its Chamber judgment in Semenya, the courtroom criticised the World Athletics laws as being discriminatory and disproportionate in how they steadiness intersex athletes’ proper to not be discriminated in opposition to. Any blanket ban on transgender athletes supported by the IOC could be a lot stricter than the laws challenged in Semenya and thus put the IOC on collision course with the courtroom and different worldwide human rights our bodies. Nevertheless, it also needs to be mentioned that the courtroom in Semenya emphasised that the state of affairs of transgender and intersex athletes shouldn’t be lumped collectively, as ‘the weighing-up of pursuits in these two conditions was very totally different’. The pending Grand Chamber referral of the case could carry extra readability on what precisely is implied on this want for a differential method. For her half, Coventry is reported to have mentioned that there ‘must be somewhat extra sensitivity’ with respect to intersex athletes and it’s unclear whether or not an IOC ban would cowl each classes.
Whereas Coventry is usually dubbed as a continuity candidate to Thomas Bach, her manifesto and early public pronouncements counsel that the IOC beneath her management will shift course on some points. Given the uneven geopolitical waters wherein the organisation finds itself, this appears inevitable – much more so with the upcoming 2028 Olympic Video games in LA and Donald Trump’s publicly frosty relationship with the IOC. Coventry might want to steer the IOC fastidiously to maintain the organisation related as a world actor whereas staying true to the lofty targets not solely of the Olympic Motion but in addition of the worldwide neighborhood at massive.
