Fifa’s flawed structure has contributed to “a wide range of social harms, not least very serious and systematic human rights abuses”, a major new report by activist group FairSquare has concluded. The human rights body calls for profound reform of the global regulator but states that this is almost impossible from within. It is argued that some aspects of governance have got worse since Gianni Infantino was elected president in 2016 after a series of corruption scandals.
The 140-page report, titled ‘Substitute: the case for the external reform of Fifa’, drew on more than 100 interviews, as well as field research, to assess the impact of World Cups going back to South Africa 2010. It concluded that the body was ultimately a negative force in its current guise due to consequences that are “contributing to harm and suffering”. This was primarily attributed to an infrastructure where power is centred in what is essentially an executive president position, which derives its support from a one-member-one-vote patronage system. The report criticises Fifa’s inability to self-regulate while pointing to the conflicts of interest that come with being a regulator as well as a competition organiser. FairSquare go on to state that this structure means the body is even failing in its core stated objective of developing football, especially with regards to the women’s game.
