Human rights advisor for security
Initiative description: Placing a human rights specialist in the security command centre for the tournament to advise senior security decision-makers on how to respond to scenarios that arise during the tournament in a manner that respects and helps protect the rights of affected right-holder groups such as attendees and local communities.
FIFA and its host country counterparts put in place mechanisms with the aim to ensure that human rights expertise were integrated in security-related decision-making during the tournament.
At the tournament headquarters level, experts of the Qatar National Human Rights Committee had a permanent presence in the host country operational command room. This meant that they attended relevant tournament headquarter meetings and were approachable to provide guidance and assistance to other functional areas.
At the venue level, a Human Rights & Anti-Discrimination Assessor was present in the operational command centre at each stadium at all 64 matches of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™.
These experts collaborated closely with the venue security teams and provided a human rights assessment of flags, banners, posters and other items to minimise risks of prohibited items and messages that may be considered of political, offensive, or discriminatory nature being displayed in the stadium, with the aim to ensure that human rights and anti-discrimination messages covered by FIFA’s human rights commitments were allowed to be displayed.
In that respect, whilst overall, the procedures were implemented in line with the relevant FIFA regulations, situations were reported where specific items that should have been allowed into the stadium were prevented from being displayed, such as rainbow-coloured items and slogans in relation to women’s rights in IR Iran. FIFA promptly raised these matters with its host country counterparts to find solutions, but not all of these situations were addressed successfully or within the expected timeframe.
Security personnel were also provided with specific human rights training. For more information, please visit the human rights principles in security training web page of this report.