No clear commitment on human and child rights for Paris and Los Angeles 2024

A new report has emphasised the need for a clearer commitment to human rights from the 2024 Olympic bids.

Human and child rights are a “neglected area” in the Paris and Los Angeles 2024 bids. This is shown in a report from the Institute of Human Rights and Business (IHRB). The Games of the XXXII Olympiad will be the first to have human rights specifically incorporated into its host city contract, but without a clear commitment to protect and respect human rights.

Missing human rights

The IHRB has published a briefing and overview of what an IOC evaluation reports on each candidate’s city approach towards human rights. Moreover, it stresses strengths and challenges of the IOC evaluation.

Even if both bidding cities, which are the first to benefit from IOC’s Agenda 2020, demonstrate an increased emphasis on sustainability and legacy, clear commitments in terms of human rights are missing. Children’s rights are even seen as a “neglected area”, receiving only a brief mention related to sourcing for Paris.

Since children are more vulnerable than adults and need specific support to guarantee that their rights are upheld, the IOC and the bidding cities should adopt an explicit child rights focus to ensure the right action is taken to address the potential impact that these events can have on children. The IOC evaluation reports neglect child rights, and human rights more broadly. As Marc Joly, head of the Children Win campaign at Terre des Hommes said:

No clear policy commitment on protecting and respecting human rights has been made (…) nor has an indication been given that such policies would be implemented if the bid were successful.

“Despite the increased collaboration between the IOC and candidate cities borne out of Agenda 2020, when it comes to protecting and respecting human rights, the bids to some extent suffer from a lack of policy coherence.The Evaluation Commission and IOC itself could and should do more to explicitly clarify how the bids meet the new human rights requirements.

“The new reference to the human rights guiding principles and anti-corruption standard certainly was a groundbreaking step by the IOC. However, the tougher part starts now: it is paramount that this change on paper will be translated by the IOC and the host city into meaningful and concrete changes and actions on the ground. The report emphasises the lack of commitment to protect and respect human and child rights. Terre des Hommes will take a close, but constructive look at this upcoming development.”

Due diligence and remedy

The IOC evaluation of the Paris and L.A. bids, for instance, makes no explicit reference to the human rights due diligence processes or remedy mechanisms at any stage of the lifecycle of the Olympic Games. It is not clear how the selected city is going to implement these crucial mechanisms.