The 2024 Summer Olympic Games are scheduled to happen from July 26 to Aug. 11 in France. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) started 2023 with excessive hopes of sustaining its solidarity with Ukraine, however its name to permit particular person athletes from Russia and Belarus to attend the 2024 Paris Games has prompted backlash.
In response to this place, worldwide athlete-led group Global Athlete launched an announcement by Ukrainian athletes in February calling on Olympic officers to withdraw help for the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes on the Olympic Games.
More athletes spoke up following the International Fencing Federation’s (IFF) March 10 choice to permit Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in worldwide fencing occasions — simply in time for them to compete in {qualifications} for subsequent yr’s Olympics.
In an open letter to the IOC and IFF, over 300 worldwide fencers decried the choice, arguing that permitting these athletes again into world sport units a grievous precedent the place “a nation can violate the values and guidelines of sport and worldwide peace with out worry of the results.”
Fencers claimed that any proposed circumstances for neutrality for these athletes, resembling proving “they’re against the struggle” or not “tied to the Russian army,” are unrealistic as a result of public denunciation of the struggle is against the law in Russia.
Activists protest the International Olympic Committee’s choice to permit Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete beneath a impartial flag on the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in entrance of the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland in March 2023.
(Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone through AP)
These expressions of concern — the most recent in a tide of Olympic athletes claiming the IOC is side-stepping commitments to bar Russia and Belarus from worldwide sport — are taking place within the wake of Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine, which Belarus has explicitly endorsed.
An Olympic tightrope
On March 28, the IOC launched suggestions for the participation of particular person athletes in worldwide sport. The IOC advisable that particular person athletes from Russia and Belarus be allowed to take part as “impartial athletes” whereas their nations remained barred from competing.
This place aligns with human rights legislation that states everyone seems to be entitled to the rights and freedoms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This choice follows elevated strain from authorized consultants, together with the United Nations Human Rights Council, to permit particular person athletes to compete in worldwide sport.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach speaks on the opening of the manager board assembly of the committee in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 28, 2023.
(Laurent Gillieron/Keystone through AP)
The thought of particular person athletes competing as impartial athletes is problematic, nevertheless, as a result of they nonetheless retain their nationality. “For Russian and Belarusian athletes,” argued a gaggle of Canadian athletes, “there is no such thing as a distinction between the athlete and the state.”
This assertion echoed Estonian Olympic Committee President Urmas Sõõrumaa’s sentiments of early February: “Let’s not neglect that virtually nearly all of Russian athletes who make it to the rostrum are army athletes and get a (army) medal once they win.”
Political strain
Political strain, too, is mounting. On Feb. 3, three of Russia’s neighbours introduced they’d take into account boycotting the Olympic Games if Russian athletes weren’t banned from the Paris Games.
A Feb. 21 joint declaration by ministers of 34 nationwide governments acknowledged:
“As lengthy as these basic problems with army entanglement and the substantial lack of readability and concrete element on a workable ‘neutrality’ mannequin usually are not addressed, we don’t agree that Russian and Belarusian athletes must be allowed again into competitors.”
These arguments current a problem, but additionally present the framework for an answer for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete whereas making certain their separation from their respective nationwide sport equipment.
A doable resolution
A doable resolution that doesn’t require ethical compromises or an abandonment of common human rights and the tenets of Olympism, is for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as stateless members of the Refugee Olympic Team.
The Refugee Olympic Team was created in 2016 to “act as an emblem of hope for refugees worldwide and convey world consideration to the magnitude of the refugee disaster.”
Enrolment within the Refugee Olympic Team constitutes a strong rejection of the politics and/or oppressive conditions in athletes’ homelands. The place of birth ought to make no distinction: whether or not Russia or Syria, Belarus or South Sudan, athletes are massed collectively as a homogenous refugee staff.
Yusra Mardini and Tachlowini Gabriyesos, of the Refugee Olympic Team, carry the Olympic flag through the opening ceremony within the Olympic Stadium on the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan in July 2021.
(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
The time period refugee has a authorized definition beneath the United Nations, and it will be affordable to imagine that any Russian or Belarusian athletes who actually disavow the struggle, and thus threat persecution at residence, would qualify.
Inviting these athletes to compete on the Refugee Team would logically disconnect Russian or Belarusian army complicity and show the IOC’s dedication to treating athletes equally, no matter the place they’re from.
Standing for unity and peace
The IOC has a chance to disavow the violence and illegality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by extending the platform and standing of refugee athletes to Russian and Belarusian athletes.
The IOC ought to proceed to ban Russia’s and Belarus’ Olympic committees and bar athletes who help the Ukrainian-Russian struggle from competing within the Olympic Games, whose rings above all stand for unity and peace.
The IOC ought to enable stateless athletes to compete on phrases which have already confirmed themselves to be efficient prior to now. Olympic values illustrate humanity’s unwillingness to be subsumed by the bloody politics of oppression, violence and struggle.
The inclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes on the refugee staff may probably deal with Olympic athletes’ criticism of the IOC’s advised pledge of disavowal.
It’s necessary to notice the intense potential penalties for Russian and Belarusian athletes who take this pathway. The time period “refugee” isn’t a defend in opposition to any retribution their former governments would possibly take. These athletes won’t solely find yourself stateless, however may also not have a house to return to or to stay in security.
The potential for statelessness could also be addressed, as it’s with the present refugee staff, even when solely quickly. However it raises the query of whether or not implementing one human proper — that of non-discrimination — justifies the violation of one other: the suitable to a nationality. This is one other severe potential weak spot that we don’t but have an answer for.
The authors don’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that may profit from this text, and have disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.
