Dylan Bettencourt
FIFA and a United Nations (UN) agency are set to team up to establish a global investigative network to tackle sexual abuse across all sports.
This comes after sexual abuse scandals were reported in Haiti and Afghanistan this year.
FIFA and the UN office on Drugs and Crime said the team was set up as a response to the “challenge of complex, devastating and serious sexual abuses in Afghanistan and Haitian football.”
The network will collaborate with local law enforcement to assist in bringing the perpetrators to justice.
A spokesperson for FIFA said the objective in establishing the entity was to help sports judicial bodies investigate and appropriately manage cases of abuse.
However, the Human Rights Watch organisation, as well as international players’ union FIFPRO, raised concerns as to whether FIFA is the right body to establish an investigative network given their poor record of tackling cases of sexual assault.
“FIFA does not have a system that allows for the care and protection of survivors. The system is still badly skewed against survivors,” Human Rights Watch said.
Fifpro said that although FIFA can be praised for starting this initiative, there remain underlying flaws in the reporting mechanisms.
“In our overwhelming experience football players do not report abuse because the reporting mechanisms in the game are too closely linked with the power structures,” said Fifpro in a statement.
“The players don’t trust the process to be impartial and safe and they don’t believe it will rigorously investigate everyone who participated, facilitated or ignored abuse.”
Both the presidents of the Afghan and Haitian Football Association were banned for life after being found guilty of sexually assaulting young female football players, some of whom were minors.
Image source: @UNODC
