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In 1998, two sporting scandals resulted in monumental changes to the way the International Olympic Committee operates. The Tour de France doping scandal that July, which saw the Festina team and others ejected for possession of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, spurred the IOC to establish the World Anti-Doping Agency the following year. Then in December, revelations that IOC officials had taken bribes from the organizers of Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics resulted in the establishment of an ethics commission within the IOC. Surely human rights abuses by Olympic host countries merit the same kind of unequivocal intolerance that the IOC has shown for doping and taking bribes. Considering the IOC’s rapid and thorough response to these two concerns, one would naturally expect the organization to adopt preventive measures to avoid a similar scandal to the one it now faces over China’s broken promises on human rights. |
Did You Know?
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Adopting standards for human rights would send a strong signal to IOC member countries that participation in and especially hosting the Olympics is not a right but rather a privilege that goes hand in hand with state responsibilities to respect and protect the values of Olympism, including human rights. Such responsibilities apply not only within a country’s borders, but they must also govern its international activities and relations. Olympism is, after all, defined as a “way of life” in the Olympic Charter, one that applies beyond the two weeks of competition every four years, and beyond a country’s borders.
The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver are a golden opportunity for Canada to reaffirm the Olympic Movement’s commitment to human rights. China’s lack of real human rights commitments and actions have cost the Olympic Movement dearly in terms of integrity and respect. An Olympic pledge from Vancouver’s organizing committee to put human rights at the centre of the 2010 Winter Games seems unavoidable and will be an invaluable contribution toward restoring the dignity the Olympic Movement has lost.
Rémy M. Beauregard
President
Rights & Democracy
1 response so far ↓
1 frank yong // Aug 25, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Can Canada hold up to the “ideals” of the Olympics on the road from now to Whistler-Vancouver 2010? Please do a reality check at http://www.no2010.com (No 2010 Olympics on Stolen Native Land & Resist the 2010 corporate circus). The Olympics Charter included a clause on the environment. However the Whistler-Vancouver Sea to Sky Highway is to run through ecologically sensitive forestland – as the recent massive rockslide on the present highway attests. The Sea to Sky Highway being constructed on public money serves to open up the area for exclusive private housing projects.
Vancouver’s East Hasting is being “gentrified” and sanitized for a good pretty showing come 2010 just like Beijing being swept clean of migrant workers, beggars, etc. British Columbia provincial government has to come up with better progress with its glacier-speed land-claims settlement process with First Nations so that Canada will present a far more “superior” global public face and human rights standard than the Chinese government who suppresses the Tibetans and Uighurs – which is a fact undeniable. Let the games begin to reach a higher human rights/environmental justice standard by Canada!