Home - FairSquare – changing the conversation on rights in sport
FairSquare is a non-profit organisation. We combine thorough, hard-hitting research with impactful advocacy to promote systemic change and stop human rights abuses.| FairSquare
FairSquare is a non-profit organisation. We combine thorough, hard-hitting research with impactful advocacy to promote systemic change and stop human rights abuses.| FairSquare
Victims of transnational repression (TNR) in the UK may lose trust in the British system to take the threats to them seriously, a Select Committee inquiry has been told in relation to cases linked to the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In written evidence published by the UK parliament’s Joint Committee […]| FairSquare
FairSquare has today joined with the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Development, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve to call on the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to use his government’s deepening links with Bahrain to advocate for the release of the country’s political prisoners. In a letter sent on 9 July, sent after a meeting […] The post British PM urged to use influence in support of Bahrain’s political prisoners appeared first on FairSquare.| FairSquare
Ninety U.S.-based civil society groups have warned FIFA that it risks becoming a “public relations tool to whitewash the reputation of an increasingly authoritarian government”, in a joint letter that calls on FIFA to publicly urge the US government to reverse immigration policies and practices introduced by the Trump administration. The letter describes how repressive […]| FairSquare
A group of leading scholars, including numerous professors of international law, have today written to FIFA’s Governance Audit and Compliance Committee (GAAC), in relation to the committee’s examination of a complaint relating to the holding of matches in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Palestine Football Association (PFA) first complained to FIFA in […]| FairSquare
The United Nations Working Group (UNWGAD) on Arbitrary Detention has this week ruled that the British-Egyptian writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah is being arbitrarily detained in Egypt in violation of international law. In a detailed 15-page opinion, the panel of independent UN experts found that Alaa’s continued detention is unlawful on multiple grounds. These include a […] The post UN body rules Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s detention arbitrary, former Ambassador calls for travel advice changes appea...| FairSquare
NGOs, academics, writers, whistleblowers and football supporters’ groups are among those who today condemned serious ongoing misgovernance at football’s world governing body FIFA in a joint statement published on the ten year anniversary of the notorious arrests of senior FIFA officials in Switzerland.| FairSquare
More than 100 British parliamentarians, and 32 human rights organisations, have written to the British Prime Minister urging him to use all the tools at his disposal to free the British-Egyptian prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah. Alaa’s mother Laila Soueif has been on hunger strike in support of him since September 2024. In a letter sent […] The post Parliament, NGOs urge British PM to act to free Alaa Abd el-Fattah appeared first on FairSquare.| FairSquare
FIFA’s ongoing failure to enforce sanctions against the Israeli Football Association (IFA) despite long-standing and irrefutable evidence that the IFA is in violation of FIFA Statutes is further evidence of the organisation’s ad hoc and selective enforcement of its rules. At its 75th annual Congress held in Paraguay on 15 May – twelve years after […] The post FIFA continues to stall and misrepresent over Israel sanctions appeared first on FairSquare.| FairSquare
A FairSquare report has found that there is a critical absence of effective policies and processes to determine the cause of migrant worker deaths in Saudi Arabia, and concluded that the surge of construction associated with projects such as NEOM and the 2034 men’s World Cup will in all likelihood lead to thousands of unexplained deaths of low-paid foreign workers in the country.| FairSquare
FairSquare’s major October 2024 report Substitute: The Case for the External Reform of FIFA, has prompted a lengthy response from world football’s governing body. An email to FairSquare from FIFA’s Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, sent on 31 October 2024, the day after the publication of Substitute, stated that the report “misunderstood and mischaracterised many […]| FairSquare
FairSquare is offering its full support to a proposal, made this week by eminent legal scholars, for the European Union to regulate sport, which outlines the possible text of a European Sports Act.| FairSquare
A new policy brief published today by FairSquare makes the case for an enhanced role for the European Union in the reform of sports governance. The brief, Laws for the Game, produced in collaboration with Dr Jan Zglinski of the London School of Economics, starts from the position that greater public control of sport is […]| FairSquare
A major new report from FairSquare, published today, identifies serious structural flaws within FIFA, football’s global governing body, that have resulted in the organisation contributing to a wide range of social harms, not least very serious and systematic human rights abuses, and that preclude it from fulfilling one of its core stated objectives of developing […]| FairSquare
