For Human Rights Watch, the FIFA World Cup set to be hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada is “a potential human rights catastrophe.” Those are the words of Minky Worden, the organization’s director, as she looks at the United States. The World Cup should mark a break with recent history and be guided by a human rights framework, Worden stressed in an interview with ntv.de: “But I can definitely say that while the World Cup may still be the biggest, it will not be the best in terms of human rights.” The mega-event runs from June 11 to July 19.
The tournament is surrounded by an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, Worden noted. She pointed to the controversial U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, ICE, which could be responsible for enforcing security measures at the World Cup. “ICE, a kind of paramilitary police, pursues a brutal, inhumane policy, even toward people who have the right to stay in the United States,” Worden said.
Worden: LGBT people are also at risk
What role ICE will play remains unclear. Recently, Rodney Barreto, Miami’s deputy organizational chief, stressed that he had received assurances from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that there would be no ICE officers in the stadiums during World Cup games.
In Worden’s view, this shows how a culture war pushed by President Donald Trump is playing out even at the World Cup. “For example, the absence of human rights protections by the host cities. They should be safeguarding minorities and vulnerable populations, including LGBT people. Yet of the four published action plans mentioned in the United States, only Atlanta’s LGBT rights plan is listed,” the activist said.
She points to painful lessons from Russia, where the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 World Cup brought no improvements for queer people: “The two events did not contribute to reducing or even masking the growing oppression in Russia, including the oppression of LGBT individuals.”
Recently, Trump has continued to clamp down on queer, and especially transgender, people. The administration’s new anti-terror strategy explicitly targets the supposed rise of “pro-transgender” terrorism (as TheColu.mn reported).
Human rights advocate: The peace prize at the draw is “a form of corruption”
The global federation FIFA has, according to Worden, fallen short in this regard, citing the peace prize awarded to Trump at the World Cup draw as an example. “This is a form of corruption. It’s a made-up thing intended to flatter a man who stands not for peace but for violent oppression of Americans, bombings outside national borders, and wars abroad.”
FIFA has integrated human rights requirements into the bidding procedures for events and identifies human rights as a strategic objective.
