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Commercially, it’s a hugely successful organisation, but it has been grossly negligent in addressing the eye-watering list of human rights abuses linked to its operations, and from the perspective of the development of the game, most notably the development of the women’s game, it appears to be irredeemably dysfunctional. - FairSquare

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A human rights organisations is arguing that world football, futsal and beach soccer governing body, FIFA, should stop self-regulating otherwise it will continue to cause or exacerbate human rights abuses and other social harms.

In its recently released 174-page report, FairSquare - a London-based non-profit human rights organisation – recommends that the European Union (EU) should regulate FIFA as it was competent to do so.

The organisation highlights that there has been little to no improvement in FIFA since critical governance reforms were implemented in 2016.

These reforms were introduced after bribery, fraud and money-laundering allegations were levelled against FIFA officials - prompting United States federal prosecutors to launch an investigation.

The bribes were allegedly used to sway media and marketing rights.

In South Africa’s case, it was alleged that that in 2008 FIFA general secretary, Jérôme Valcke,  transferred US$10 million that had been given to FIFA by South African Football Association (SAFA) president Danny Jordaan to accounts controlled by Jack Warner, then head of the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF).

The payment was the key shred of evidence that in the US prosecutors’ indictment, which accused Warner of taking a bribe in exchange for helping South Africa secure the right to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup – the first ever for Africa.

The  SAFA payment had been intended to support the development of football in the Caribbean. However, $1.6 million was used by Warner to pay personal loans and credit cards and a further $360 000 was withdrawn by people connected to Warner. The Trinidadian supermarket chain JTA Supermarkets also received $4 860 000 from the FIFA payment.

The FairSquare report identifies serious structural flaws within FIFA that precluded it from fulfilling one of its core stated objectives of developing the game.

Co-director of FairSquare and lead author, Nick McGeehan, said that in some key elements of FIFA’s operations there has been obvious regression.

“FIFA is a commercial rights holder, a development organisation, a competition organiser, and a global regulator, all rolled into one big mess,” McGeehan said.

“Commercially, it’s a hugely successful organisation, but it has been grossly negligent in addressing the eye-watering list of human rights abuses linked to its operations, and from the perspective of the development of the game, most notably the development of the women’s game, it appears to be irredeemably dysfunctional,” he added.

FairSquare works to promote better, more democratic governance to prevent sporting institutions contributing to harm and suffering. “Our work on accountability in sport is informed by years of research and advocacy on abuses connected to the Qatar 2022 World Cup, and the role of FIFA.”

The report says that FIFA was structurally resistant to internal reform because its senior officials and a critical mass of its member associations are locked into a mutually dependent system of patronage, whereby FIFA’s development money is redistributed in such a way as to encourage the member associations’ political support for the President.

“This system makes effective self-regulation impossible and is at the root cause of the social harms that flow from FIFA’s misgovernance. The report’s central finding is that FIFA will remain unfit for purpose until this patronage network is broken up, if necessary via an institutional separation of FIFA’s various functions.”

FairSquare conducted more than 100 interviews with individuals affected by FIFA’s operations and a wide range of experts, including football administrators, human rights researchers, sociologists, economists, lawyers, experts in governance, corruption and tax.

The report draws on field research in Brazil and South Africa, as well as an extensive review of relevant FIFA and external literature.

FairSquare concludes that FIFA cannot effectively self-regulate itself because of structural flaws, which were built into the organisation.

There is a critical lack of transparency over how member associations spend FIFA’s development funds distributed under the FIFA Forward Development Programme since 2016, says the report.

“In 2019, FIFA said it would subject all its member associations, upon whom the FIFA President relies for his political power under FIFA’s one-member-one-vote system, to independent external audits. However, there does not appear to be any public repository of these audits. The FIFA President has been granted excessive executive powers through the introduction of the Bureau of the Council to FIFA’s governance structure in 2016.”

`The report say that:

·      FIFA has weaponised its prohibition of “political interference”, arbitrarily sanctioning or threatening to sanction FIFA member associations, when member associations or national courts take decisions that are out of line with the interests of the FIFA President;

·      In 2024, FIFA reversed key governance reforms introduced in 2016, significantly increasing the number of standing committees, and allowing its regional confederations to loosen or scrap presidential term limits. 

“The outcome of these deep governance failings has been disastrous. FIFA’s operations entail very serious risks to a wide range of human rights and the organisation  is guilty of serious due diligence failures, most notably in the run up to the Qatar 2022 World Cup, where it repeatedly failed to take steps to mitigate the serious human rights risks to migrant workers involved in preparations for the tournament.”

 Its operations elsewhere, the report says, have been linked to abuses including mass evictions, the destruction of livelihoods, police abuse, extrajudicial killings and other violations of the right to life, forced labour, and physical, sexual and psychological abuse. 

The report says that FIFA’s failure to identify these risks and take steps to mitigate them has been abject.

“Beyond that, FIFA has even undermined its own human rights and social commitments by insisting that hosts of its World Cups suspend or provide FIFA with exemptions from domestic labour laws, and has deprived developing country hosts of hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue by demanding tax exemptions for itself and its partners.”

FairSquare said that FIFA recently  manipulated its own World Cup bidding guidelines to enable Saudi Arabia to be the sole bidder for the men’s 2034 World Cup and played a role in arbitrarily limiting the scope of an independent human rights context assessment of Saudi Arabia to exclude a large number of highly relevant human rights.

In its recommendations, FairSquare says that the EU’s laws were binding and could be drafted to have effect outside its 27-member states in Europe.

The EU, with its member states, would be far less susceptible to political pressure from FIFA.

“Football is far too socially, politically and economically important to be governed this poorly. Only external regulation will provide the foundations for FIFA to deliver on football’s transfomative potential and to prevent the organisation from causing more serious harm,” said Nick McGeehan.

FairSquare says that it wrote to FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, on October 7 2024 with a summary of the report’s key findings, and to provide FIFA with the opportunity to respond. FIFA did not respond.