Ten years behind caught up in seven months? The industry is ten years behind in human rights issues, Mary Harvey stated in May last year, when the human rights committee of the Bundestag dealt with sport.

On Wednesday, Thomas Weikert, President of the then absent German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), presented a respected and ambitious executive director of the new DOSB Human Rights Council: Joachim Rückert, former President of the United Nations Human Rights Council. It was only presented to the associations in December. Rückert naturally works with Mary Harvey, Chairman of the Board of the Centre For Sport And Human Rights.

Is Infantino keeping his promise?

After all, there is a lot to do. For example, to look at Gianni Infantino, the president of the world football association FIFA. In terms of human rights, the Qatar World Cup is not over yet, as Bernd Neuendorf, President of the German Football Association, explained to the committee. Is Infantino keeping his promise to pay compensation from a fund to victims of stadium construction and relatives of fatalities? How to deal with Saudi Arabia's ambition to outdo Qatar in sportswashing?

Above all, however, how to react if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) invites athletes to participate in the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, whose home country occupies parts of neighboring Ukraine in a war in violation of international law, kills civilians in their homes with artillery and rocket fire, declares its soldiers heroes for rape, murder and torture?

Violence and abuse

The issue of human rights does not only concern the awarding of Olympic Games and World Cups to distant regimes and rogue states exposed as such. Tobias Preuß and Maximilian Klein reiterated for Athletes Germany that it also appears in violence and abuse, in the restriction of freedom of expression, in questions of equality and discrimination, even in social insecurity, in which many German Olympic participants also live.

The athletes' representatives demand a facility that protects the integrity of individuals, organizations and competitions. Since a law on the promotion of sport is to be created, they suggest that recipients of state support be bound by the guiding principles for human rights.

Should Russia still wage war in Ukraine on 26 July 2024 and should the IOC allow Russian athletes – under whatever conditions – to attend the opening ceremony of that day: How do politics, the state and sport in Germany react? Presumably, no one will prohibit German athletes from participating.

But can the state pay for their trip to Paris with tax money, as is usually the case? Wouldn't Russia ultimately also benefit from such funding? As the DOSB communicates in many voices, it may be too early for decisions. But the qualifying competitions are just around the corner, the questions about the return of the Russians are in the room. The DOSB now owes an answer.