The president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, has announced a $10 million fund to strengthen safe sport and the creation of a working group to coordinate the Olympic Movement’s safeguarding efforts. The announcement was made by Bach during a conference hosted by the IOC in Lausanne and attended by representatives from 36 International Federations (IFs), plus the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) and the Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations (AIOWF).
Cases of harassment and abuse in sports have occurred over the past few years with increasing frequency across various disciplines and geographical locations. The new working group, chaired by executive board member and deputy chair of the IOC’s Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Commission, HRH Prince Feisal Al Hussein, will seek to bridge the gap between the work that is done at the international level and the need for local solutions. Most countries lack local structures to both prevent and appropriately address harassment and abuse cases, the IOC said. The creation of the new working group will provide a forum to ensure that safeguarding efforts are “local, contextualized and appropriate.”
The announcement builds on nearly 20 years of work by the IOC to ensure that athletes can train and compete in safe environments. The “IOC Certificate: Safeguarding Officer in Sport,” launched in 2021, has already trained 165 students across 66 countries in its first two editions. Safe sport is also one of the five focus areas of the IOC’s “Gender Equality and Inclusion Objectives for 2021-2024.” Furthermore, promoting safe, inclusive and equitable sport is a key priority of the Olympism365 strategy, which aims to strengthen the role of sport as an enabler of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the primary focus of the IOC’s ”Safe Sport Action Plan 2021-2024.”
The IOC has convened experts from around the world to take part in the third safeguarding consensus meeting, to be held in September 2023, during which the upcoming challenges, and notably cyber-abuse in sports, will be widely discussed.
