Feature: Sport and Human Rights
No.48
September 2006
 
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Achieving Human Rights in and through Sport
Peter Donnelly & Bruce Kidd

 

Abstract
This article notes the renewed international interest in human rights and addresses the ways in which human rights may be achieved in and through sport. Three overlapping sections deal with: (a) the use of sports to achieve human rights, focusing specifically on the anti-apartheid movement; (b) the right to participate in sports; and (c) the rights of specific classes of persons, which often combine ideas about the right to participate with ideas about the use of sport in the more general achievement of human rights. The latter section addresses women’s rights, aboriginal rights, disability rights, rights associated with those living in poverty, racial minorities, sexual orientation and, in the case of sport, athletes’ and workers’ rights. The article concludes by noting the need to determine how to make the right to participate in sport more widely available and the need to determine the circumstances under which participation in sport might assist in the struggle to achieve human rights.

Introduction
Following a period of stagnation, when United Nations (UN) actions on human rights were limited and spending for human rights was only 1% of the total UN budget, there has been a recent revival of interest in the issue of human rights. For example, the new United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council has finally been established to replace the problematic and ineffective UN Human Rights Commission; the second World Forum on Human Rights was recently (2006) held in France to mark the 40th and 30th anniversaries respectively of the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and, perhaps most significantly, the UN established the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs represent a renewed commitment to achieving many of the human rights first outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, establishing a timetable (2015) for the realization of these eight Goals:
  • Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
  • Achieve universal primary education
  • Promote gender equality and empower women
  • Reduce child mortality
  • Improve maternal health
  • Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
  • Ensure environmental sustainability
  • Develop a global partnership for development
As noted subsequently, sport has become involved in the achievement of the MDGs.
“Human rights are literally the rights one has because one is a human being,” (Donnelly, 1989, p. 9), and represent the difference between “a life” and “a life of dignity” (p. 17). Barnes’ more legal definition suggests that, “A ‘right’ is a just claim or recognized interest; it is a moral or legal entitlement that others are duty-bound to respect” (1996, p. 47). Thus, the realization of rights produces responsibilities for others, a situation that often involves politics and tensions. In addition to the general notion of human rights, rights have also come to be associated with classes of persons – people who, because of their subordinate status in the social structures and material conditions of their societies, have not achieved equal rights. Thus, there has been increased focus on, for example, children’s rights, women’s rights, aboriginal rights, disability rights and rights associated with those living in poverty, with racial minorities (sometimes a misnomer in countries such as South Africa), with sexual orientation and, in the case of sport, athletes’ rights.

Human Rights and Sports
Although the relationship between sport and human rights has only in recent years been considered a topic of research interest, it is important to note that human rights are continually and routinely violated in ways directly or indirectly related to sports. In order to address the various ways in which human rights may be achieved in and through sports, the following is organized into three overlapping sections: (a) the use of sports to achieve human rights; (b) the right to participate in sports; and (c) the rights of specific classes of persons, which often combine ideas about the right to participate with ideas about the use of sport in the more general achievement of human rights.

The achievement of human rights through sport
Although the response of the sport and physical education communities to the MDGs indicates a widespread belief in the possibility of sport being used to achieve human rights (see below), there is only one major example of a human rights campaign where sport is widely acknowledged to have been involved in its success, namely, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
White supremacist governments in South Africa began to implement apartheid policies in 1948, relegating non-whites to second class including a ban from participation on national sports teams (and an attempt to ensure no non-whites competed on teams from other countries that came to South Africa). International concern in the sporting communities was slow to develop, sport organizations generally accepting the principle that ‘sport and politics should be separate’. The first anti-apartheid step taken by a sport organization was in 1956 when the International Table Tennis Federation replaced the all-white South African Table Tennis Union with the non-racial South African Table Tennis Board (SATTB). However, SATTB players were not permitted to travel to represent South Africa, having had their passports confiscated by the South African government (ANC, 1971).
In 1965, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) gave moral and legal force to campaigns against apartheid and apartheid sport. The anti-apartheid campaigns increasingly gained the world’s attention, creating growing isolation of South Africa. Governments, civil society organizations and countries who continued to compete against white South African teams all combined to increasingly isolate South Africa from sporting contacts with other nations. Anti-apartheid leaders relied heavily on the moral and legal authority of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and CERD, which was binding upon all signatory governments. The United Nations was a continuing source of strength in the struggle against apartheid (cf., Guelke, 1993; Kidd, 1991).
It finally became impossible for Commonwealth leaders, who were responsible for reporting their progress on CERD, and who were developing their own post-colonial racial equity initiatives, to ignore the apartheid policies of one of its members, or to ignore the growing campaign to isolate South Africa from international sport. In 1977, they signed the Gleneagles Agreement on Sporting Contacts with South Africa, and by 1985, with the signing of the International Convention against Apartheid in Sport (UN Human Rights Commission), no country played South Africa in any major sport (cf., Hain, 1971; Thompson, 1988). It is possible to imagine the symbolic message delivered if no one played against your national team in any major sport, especially when some of your athletes and teams are among the best in the world. While many other political and economic measures were taken in the 40 year campaign against apartheid, it is widely acknowledged that the sporting isolation and condemnation of South Africa played an important role in ending apartheid during the years 1989-1994.

The right to participate in sport
Modern sports were developed in the 19th century as socialization and pleasure for imperial upper-class males (Kidd &Donnelly, 2000). Race, class and gender exclusions were routinely maintained in sports, and still are to some extent. Although various attempts were made to democratize participation, the barriers did not really begin to give way until after the Second World War, in the same period that led to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and led to various liberations, civil rights and equal rights movements around the world. The right to participate in sports is an aspect of social and cultural rights and is directly related to the rights to health and education.
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights indirectly advocates the right to participate in sport through Article 24 (“everyone has the right to rest and leisure”) and Article 27 (“the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community”). However, the first specific international declarations of the right to participate in sport and physical activity emerged in the 1970s. European nations developed the 1976 European Sport for All Charter, the first Article of which stated that:
  • Every individual shall have the right to participate in sport.
    This was followed in 1978 by the International Charter of Physical Education and Sport, adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO (www.unesco.org/youth/charter). The first Article states that:
  • The practice of physical education and sport is a fundamental right for all.
    In 1992, the Council of Europe refined the European Sports Charter to take into account high performance and professional sport issues such as violence and doping, and ideas about competitiveness and personal achievement. Article One states:
  • Governments, with a view to the promotion of sport as an important factor in human development, shall take the steps necessary to apply the provisions of this Charter in accordance with the principles set out in the Code of Sport Ethics in order:
  • i. to enable every individual to participate in sport…
    Even the IOC, an organization dedicated to high performance sport, declares as one of its Fundamental Principles (International Olympic Committee, 1997) that:
  • The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport in accordance with his or her needs.
    The right to participate in sport and physical activity is now a matter of policy in many developed countries where it is recognized as ‘Sport for All’, and where it has achieved even greater urgency with growing concerns about health care costs and increasing obesity. However, attempts to implement Sport for All appear to have reached a plateau in recent years and, especially in developing nations, the right to participate in sport has either not been addressed, or has often been addressed in ways that are neo-colonialist, leading, for example, to the loss of existing physical cultures (by continuing to replace “non-Western body cultures with imperial games” (Giulianotti, 2006, p. 66)), or to the establishment of systems of sport that emphasize the development of high performance athletes rather than broad-based participation (e.g. Olympic Solidarity; see Donnelly & Kidd, 2006). Although the right to participate in sports is now widely recognized, it is not widely implemented.
Sport and the human rights of specific classes
Increasingly, marginalized groups and populations are announcing their presence and claiming their right to human rights with the use of sport. Using just one sport, football (soccer), recent examples include:
  • The Railroad All Stars (a soccer team of female sex workers in Guatemala)
  • The Millennium Stars (a soccer team of former child soldiers in Liberia)
  • Teams of amputees, who are victims of land mines and reprisal amputations in West Africa
  • The Homeless World Cup (teams comprised of homeless individuals from various cities)
These examples are replicated by larger classes of persons who, throughout the world, have struggled for greater involvement in sport (the right to participate), often as part of a larger struggle for human rights and/or in the belief that participation in sport will enable the achievement of human rights. The following provides a brief outline of some of these struggles.
Gender. The first major victory for women’s rights in sport was in the United States, where Title IX (the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act) forced many public educational institutions to increase the resources for women’s sports. This legislation had a powerful impact on increasing the participation of girls and women in sport (although a negative effect on the number of coaching and administrative positions for women) and many have argued that such increases in participation are related to increasing gender equity in the United States. In 1979, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) included article 10g, which specifically advocates the right to participate in sports. Gender equity campaigns and legislation in many countries have helped to increase women’s participation (e.g. in Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) brought sports under the ambit of federal and provincial human rights codes). However, it was the emergence in the mid-1990s of lobby groups to advocate specifically for women’s rights in sport, most importantly the International Working Group on Women in Sport and Atlanta Plus, that have driven adherence to CEDAW and obliged patriarchal organizations such as the IOC to begin to deal with gender equity issues in sport.
Disability. The struggle for disability rights is contemporary with, but initially received less attention than other human rights movements. However, the organization of sports by and for athletes with a mental or a physical disability, culminating in the Special Olympics and the Paralympic Games, has resulted in a significant growth in participation. Many argue that the demonstration of skill and effort by athletes with a disability signals to able-bodied individuals the capacity and equality of those with a disability.
Sexuality. Sport has been considered as one of the most hostile environments for gay and lesbian athletes. However, in line with sexuality rights movements in various countries and the inclusion of sexuality in equity legislation, gay and lesbian sport teams and leagues have been established in many cities in the West and the organization of the Gay Games (and the recent alternative Out Games (Montreal, 2006)) to celebrate gay and lesbian sport have led to reports of slowly growing inclusion and less ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. National and international sport organizations have recently reached agreements on the inclusion of transgendered athletes in sports.
Aboriginal and racial minority. The growing aboriginal rights movements around the world have frequently attempted to revive traditional cultures, including physical cultures. This has sometimes led to the re-establishment of traditional games and games festivals (e.g. the Arctic Winter Games). However, aboriginal athletes also participate in modern sports and their accomplishments add immeasurably to community pride and possibly to the perceived status and equity struggles of aboriginal peoples.
The anti-apartheid movement was contemporary with, and preceded, other campaigns for racial human rights in sports. Leading up to the Mexico City Olympic Games, the Olympic Movement for Human Rights advocated a boycott, but ended with the sacrificial gesture of two United States black athletes on the podium. The campaign in the United States continues with Richard Lapchick’s annual racial report cards. In the United Kingdom, the Sporting Equals campaign continues the advocacy of racial rights, together with specific campaigns in cricket and football. Similar monitoring and campaign exist or are planned in a number of countries.
Children. Please see ‘Sport and Children’s Rights' in this issue.
Poverty. Social class is the ‘elephant in the room’ in terms of human rights, equity and sport participation. Even in developed nations there is a well-established linear relationship between income and participation in sport and physical activity. Poverty is the single greatest barrier to participation. Human rights and equity legislation deal quite well with categories of humans based on identity, as noted above; such legislation is much less effective in dealing with the material conditions of life. As Gary Armstrong notes with regard to the neighbourhood football programmes established in Liberia following the civil war, in a statement that resonates with both poverty and the MDGs (below), “rehabilitation and reintegration projects are doomed to fail if there is no better life offered to the disaffected demilitarized” (2006, p. 206).
Combination / the MDGs. The classes of persons listed above characterize people in terms of a single category. Since everyone has a gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, age, social class and varying levels of ability/disability, classification in terms of a single category limits the opportunities for analysis of sport and human rights. The Millennium Development Goals, by taking into account poverty and social class, age, gender and health status, provide a limited combination of social structural categories. Leading up to 2005, the International Year of Sport and Physical Education, two major documents were produced relating sport and physical education to achievement of the MDGs (Swiss Agency for Development, 2005; United Nations, 2003). These documents argue, with limited evidence, that increased participation in sport will assist in the achievement of the MDGs. While increased participation is a worthy goal, it will be important to determine the specific circumstances under which such participation leads to the achievement of human rights.
Workers / athletes. More research attention has been directed to a somewhat different class of persons, those who work in the sports and sporting goods industries. The recognition that athletes must be afforded the same protections enjoyed by all citizens derives much of its moral and legal force from human rights legislation (cf. Kidd and Eberts, 1982; Barnes, 1996). However, the well-documented violations of athletes rights to health, freedom of speech (MacNeill, et al., 2001) and other well established human rights indicates that a different set of ‘working’ conditions appears to apply to those in professional and high performance sport (cf. Rhoden’s (2006) recent book referring to wealthy Black professional athletes in the U.S. as “$40 million slaves”).
Workers in the sporting goods industry have also received a great deal of attention in recent years, spearheaded by the anti-Nike campaign (Knight & Greenberg, 2002; Sage, 1999). Concerns about the export of jobs to low wage countries, sweatshop working conditions and child labour have resulted in a sustained campaign to monitor and improve the conditions for workers in the sporting goods and sport apparel industries. Some successes have been achieved in improving the workers’ right of those employed in the sports industries.

Conclusion
The achievement of human rights in terms of participation in sport has been mixed. Significant gains have been reported in the participation rates of women and persons with a disability. However, the Sport for All campaigns in Western nations appear to have stalled, often with significantly less than 50% of the population participating regularly, and renewed research efforts need to be made to determine the appropriate circumstances and policies that might lead to optimum realization of the right to participate in sport.
With regard to the achievement of human rights through sport, only in the anti-apartheid campaign did sport unequivocally assist in the achievement of racial equity in South Africa. In other cases, there is abundant anecdotal evidence of assumed relationships between participation in sport and the achievement of a broader range of human rights.
What is needed is much more systematic evidence of the circumstances under which the opportunity to participate in sport might result in learning the skills and motivation to win the struggle for human rights for various classes of persons.

References
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Contact
Dr. Peter Donnelly
University of Toronto
Toronto, CANADA
Peter.donnelly@utoronto.ca

Dr. Bruce Kidd
University of Toronto
Toronto, CANADA
Bruce.kidd@utoronto.ca





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