FIFA President Gianni Infantino recently awarded the new FIFA Peace Prize to President Donald Trump. The global soccer federation had no transparent process for the award, which appears to be cravenly created for Trump, who was disappointed in October when Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Prize instead of him.
The Nobel Committee often awards its Peace Prize to leaders who champion democracy and human rights, including those whose sacrifices include years as political prisoners. Past recipients include Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, China’s Liu Xiaobo, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama.
According to a post on Infantino’s Instagram, the FIFA Peace Prize aims to “recognise exceptional actions for peace and unity.”
Human Rights Watch has written to Gianni Infantino to request details of the Peace Prize’s nominees, judges, terms of reference and selection process. Unlike the detailed arrangements for the Nobel Peace Prize, FIFA has issued no criteria for nomination or selection for its new prize.
By concocting this award, Infantino risks turning the 2026 FIFA World Cup to be held in the U.S., Canada and Mexico into yet another sportswashing event in a world that already has far too many.
Human Rights Watch has long documented “sportswashing,” meaning when governments use mega-sporting events to sanitize their reputations while committing grave human rights abuses at home or abroad.
In 2008, China spent over $40 billion to dazzle with a spectacular Olympics. Outside the limelight, the authorities evicted hundreds of thousands of residents to make way for Olympic venues, detained journalists and set up designated “protest zones” but prohibited anyone from protesting there. One man who applied to protest was imprisoned for three years. While the world applauded Beijing’s organizational prowess, the Chinese surveillance state tightened its grip.
Then came Russia. Both the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 FIFA World Cup were vehicles for President Vladimir Putin to project Russian prestige, while wielding a staggering crackdown on civil society and LGBTQ rights.
The Qatar 2022 World Cup led to preventable deaths of thousands of migrant workers who built stadiums and infrastructure worth $220 billion to elevate Qatar’s status on the world stage. FIFA’s own human rights committee concluded the soccer body had “a responsibility” to financially compensate families of those who were harmed or died building World Cup infrastructure in Qatar, but FIFA has paid no compensation to those families.
After human rights crises tied to the Russia and Qatar World Cups, FIFA pledged that the 2026 World Cup would be different. FIFA adopted the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, published a Human Rights Policy and said the U.S./Canada/Mexico World Cup would be the first with a human rights strategy.
Instead, Infantino’s FIFA is enabling the Trump administration’s sportswashing campaign. Trump has named himself chairman of the White House Task Force on the 2026 World Cup, and human rights risks due to U.S. visa and immigration policies are escalating.
FIFA’s so-called peace prize is being awarded against a backdrop of violent detentions of immigrants, national guard deployments in U.S. cities and the obsequious cancellation of FIFA’s own anti-racism and anti-discrimination campaigns. Trump claims the U.S. will welcome the world, but has simultaneously imposed a harsh travel ban excluding or restricting fans from as many as 30 countries. The only exceptions are for World Cup athletes and key staff.
As FIFA’s Club World Cup tournament games began in Los Angeles next year, thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stormed into predominantly Latino communities, tearing families apart. Human Rights Watch has documented how the Trump administration arrested and summarily deported noncitizens, including people who had a lawful right to apply for asylum and have their claims heard. A new report by Human Rights Watch documented the arrest and return of an asylum seeker who took his children to the Club World Cup soccer tournament final, was detained, separated from his children and deported.
Trump policies on refugees, crackdowns on free speech, maritime strikes that amount to extrajudicial killings and deportations of asylum seekers are at odds with any credible “peace prize.”
Gianni Infantino and his FIFA colleagues should use their leverage to demand that the Trump administration do what’s right for the games: roll back discriminatory travel bans, refrain from abusive immigration enforcement operations in and around World Cup venues, protect children’s rights and commit to uphold freedom of assembly and speech.
FIFA’s job is to help make the World Cup tournament safe and successful, not to fabricate a peace prize.
Minky Worden is the editor of China’s Great Leap, a book on the Beijing 2008 Olympics. She oversees sport at Human Rights Watch, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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