This protest outdoors IOC headquarters in early 2022 objected to the Winter Games being held in China. Valentin Flauraud/AFP by way of Getty Images
The International Olympic Committee, a nongovernmental group primarily based in Switzerland that’s unbiased of anyone nation, was based in 1894. It’s a gaggle of officers who supervise and help the Olympics and set Olympic insurance policies about every thing from whether or not break dancing could be added as an official sport to what’s required for an athlete to compete on a staff representing a rustic the place they don’t usually reside. Because the IOC is commonly within the information, we requested two sports activities students, Yannick Kluch and Eli Wolff, 5 questions on what it does and why so many individuals need it to alter the way it responds to issues about human rights and different points.
1. What are the principle issues the IOC does?
The IOC coordinates what’s often called the Olympic motion, the technical time period for the constellation of committees, federations and different our bodies that places on spectacular sporting competitions each two years.
That consists of overseeing the 206 nationwide Olympic committees and 35 worldwide sports activities federations. The IOC additionally supervises the particular organizing committees shaped for each one of many Olympic Games, seven years earlier than the competitions start.
The IOC’s 101 members, a lot of whom are former athletes, meet no less than every year to make essential choices.
They’re liable for choosing the place future Olympic Games will happen, electing their leaders, selecting new Olympic sports activities and making amendments to the Olympic Charter. The IOC’s personal officers choose candidates for membership within the committee.
Thomas Bach, a German, has served as IOC president since 2013. He commonly convenes its govt board. He represents the IOC throughout the Games.
The IOC additionally oversees a number of humanitarian initiatives resembling Peace and Development by way of Sport,the Olympic Refugee staff and the Olympic Solidarity program. The committee has observer standing with the United Nations and promotes a worldwide symbolic ceasefire throughout the Games often called the Olympic Truce decision.
Thomas Bach is the president of the IOC.
Eric Dubost/Pacific Press/LightRocket by way of Getty Images
2. What’s the IOC’s mission?
The IOC has three essential roles. The world nonprofit says “its job is to encourage the promotion of Olympic values, to make sure the common celebration of the Olympic Games and its legacy and to help all of the organizations affiliated to the Olympic Movement.”
In the Olympic Charter the IOC goes into extra element about its rules, articulating the seven elementary rules of “Olympism.”
These embody inserting “sport on the service of the harmonious improvement of humankind, with a view to selling a peaceable society involved with the preservation of human dignity,” selling the “observe of sport [as] a human proper,” a dedication to political neutrality and shielding athletes from discrimination.
The IOC can also be supposed to guard the ethics and integrity of the Olympic motion, forestall athlete abuse and harassment and usually make competitions protected, honest and accessible for all qualifying rivals.
3. How does the IOC get cash, and the place do these funds go?
About three-quarters of its funds come from the sale of the rights to broadcast the Olympic Games. It will get a lot of the relaxation by way of advertising and marketing offers. The IOC collected greater than US$5 billion for the 2014 and 2016 Games, the newest information it has made out there.
Because the IOC operates as a nonprofit, its leaders don’t handle this cash as they may if it have been a non-public firm. Instead, the committee distributes 90% of its income to nationwide Olympic committees, Olympic athletes and different entities, reserving the remainder of the cash to cowl operational bills.
The IOC additionally gives half of the funds utilized by the World Anti-Doping Association, established in 1999 to analysis and monitor using prohibited medicines and coverings by athletes. Governments present the remainder of the affiliation’s funding.
Olympic athletes, particularly those that compete on U.S. groups, get very low compensation for his or her participation within the Games, and they’re restricted when it comes to their skill to earn cash from advertising and marketing offers. Bach, though he’s technically a volunteer, earns about $244,000 a yr, and different IOC leaders are paid as properly.
4. What are among the controversies the IOC faces?
The IOC’s response, in 2014, to proof that the Russian authorities was sponsoring systematic doping of its athletes has led to widespread criticism for being too lenient and has sparked controversy ever since. To punish the Russian authorities, with out sidelining all Russian athletes from the Games, the IOC allows them to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” with out permitting using the Russian flag or anthem.
In 2022, doping remained an issue. That turned clear when belated take a look at outcomes confirmed Russian determine skater Kamila Valieva had used a banned coronary heart treatment a number of weeks earlier than she competed within the Olympics. The IOC’s response to this information appeared to disappoint all sides.
Kamila Valieva of Russia stored competing in Beijing after proof that she had examined optimistic for a banned substance got here to gentle.
Justin Setterfield/Getty Images Sport
Separately, the IOC has didn’t cease corruption within the bidding course of for internet hosting the Olympics, a longstanding downside most just lately uncovered with the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the Olympic Games held in Tokyo 5 years later.
American sprinters Tommie Smith (heart) and John Carlos increase their fists and provides the Black Power salute throughout the U.S. nationwide anthem on the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.
Bettmann/GettyImages
Human rights teams have expressed outrage over the IOC’s choices that allowed China to host the Olympic Games in 2008 and 2022.
China faces widespread accusations, together with from the U.S. authorities, that it oppresses Uyghurs in China’s western Xinjiang area. This abuse is more and more thought of to represent genocide.
Many athletes and different individuals object to China’s repression of the Tibetan individuals. China has additionally drawn widespread criticism for cracking down on free speech in Hong Kong.
The United States and a number of other different nations cited these issues in saying a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Interestingly, the committee states that “always, the IOC recognises and upholds human rights” on its web site.
The IOC has additionally come beneath hearth for its Rule 50.
Originally adopted in 1975 as Rule 55, it now states that “no type of demonstration or political, spiritual or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic websites, venues or different areas.” This is the rationale for why the IOC bars athletes from participating in protests whereas they compete or throughout medal ceremonies.
Time and once more the IOC has relied on Rule 50 to justify its dedication to what it calls “political neutrality” as a elementary precept of Olympism – even when that dedication has contradicted a number of facets of its mission.
5. Is the IOC impartial and apolitical?
Well, it will depend on whom you ask.
“The place of the IOC have to be, given the political neutrality, that we’re not commenting on political points,” Bach mentioned, when requested concerning the abuse of Uyghurs by China’s authorities on the outset of the Beijing Winter Games. “Because in any other case, if we’re taking a political standpoint, and we’re getting in the course of tensions and disputes and confrontations between political powers, then we’re placing the Olympics in danger.”
In 2020, likewise, Bach wrote that the Olympics “can set an instance for a world the place everybody respects the identical guidelines and each other.”
[Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]
Human rights consultants and activists around the globe, nonetheless, have known as the IOC’s place to be apolitical a fantasy and urged the committee to take a stronger stance on human rights abuses.
Shortly earlier than the Tokyo Games started, in the summertime of 2021, greater than 150 consultants on sports activities, human rights and social justice – together with each of us – printed an open letter. In it, we known as on the IOC to display a stronger dedication to human rights and social justice.
“Neutrality isn’t impartial,” we argued. “As a mirrored image of society at massive, sport is just not resistant to the social ills which have created world inequities. … Staying impartial means staying silent, and staying silent means supporting ongoing injustice.”
Yannick Kluch is a member of the Team USA Council on Racial and Social Justice, the place he serves as exterior skilled on athlete protests/demonstrations and racial and social justice. He can also be on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council for USA Diving, the National Governing Body for the game of diving within the United States. Kluch serves on the advisory board for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council for Excellence (DIECE). He has signed onto the Rule 50 skilled letter referenced on this article and is a co-author on the History News Network article referenced on the finish of the piece.
In addition to his position on the University of Connecticut, Eli Wolff directs the Power of Sport Lab platform, and he’s additionally a coordinator of the Athletes and Social Change discussion board with the Muhammad Ali Center. He has signed onto the Rule 50 skilled letter and the Beijing 2022 skilled article referenced on this article.
