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	Human Rights and the 2022 Olympics by Minky Worden Human Rights Watch   The Olympic spirit has come to this: Two authoritarian countries are vying to host the 2022 Winter Games, competing to endure a huge financial strain for the benefit of burnishing their public image. The withdrawal of Oslo in October left Beijing, China’s capital, and Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, as the contenders. They formally submitted their bids to the International Olympic Committee this month.   That helps explain why the president of the International Olympic Committee, the German lawyer Thomas Bach, pushed through landmark human rights reforms at a big Olympic summit meeting in Monaco last month.   For the first time, host countries must sign a contract that requires protections for human rights, labor and the environment. These “international agreements and protocols” are meant to protect against abuses such as Russia’s anti-gay law, passed ahead of last year’s Winter Games in Sochi, and the labor and human rights abuses before and during the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. These reforms are about to get a rigorous test in the global spotlight — whether the 2022 Games are in China, which welcomed journalists to Beijing in 2008 with a censored Internet, or Kazakhstan, which locks up critics and closes down newspapers.   Over the past decade, Human Rights Watch has documented how major sporting events are also accompanied by human rights violations when games are awarded to serial human rights abusers. Repressive countries promised to respect media and other rights to secure the events, then reneged and relied on international sporting bodies to stay silent.   As these countries prepare for events, forced evictions without fair compensation free up space for the massive new infrastructure construction that Olympics require. Migrant workers are cheated and labor under long hours and sometimes deadly working conditions. Construction leads to environmental and other complaints. Activists who object are silenced or jailed. Beijing locked up critics of the Olympics. In Russia, an environmentalist drew a three-year prison sentence, and members of the feminist band Pussy Riot were beaten and detained, for their protests of the Sochi Games. Given the abuses, is there any hope for change?   If there is the political will to implement them, the contract reforms could improve conditions in countries that host big sporting events. Autocrats are increasingly turning to international sporting events to boost their global standing, so the regulations adopted by their governing bodies might be the only way to make human rights advances in some of the most abusive places.   At Sochi last year, for example, the I.O.C. pressured the Russian government to take action against the theft of wages from workers who helped build Olympic venues and infrastructure. Some 500 companies were investigated, and inspectors found that thousands of workers had been cheated out of more than $8 million in wages. The general director of a top construction company was arrested on suspicion of withholding wages. This action resulted from a specific reform from the 2009 Olympic Congress: a promise that the I.O.C. would intervene in the event of “serious abuses,” including abuses of migrant workers.   In Iran, hard-liners and reformists alike cheer the country’s volleyball successes. A law student, Ghoncheh Ghavami, was jailed in Iran’s notorious Evin prison last year after she protested a ban on women entering a stadium to watch an International Federation of Volleyball World League match. In November, the federation (known as FIVB, the acronym in French) called on the Iranian government to release Ms. Ghavami, and affirmed its commitment to “inclusivity and the right of women to participate in sport on an equal basis.” The federation warned that Iran’s policy could limit its ability to host international tournaments in the future. Ms. Ghavami was released on bail shortly thereafter, but not before a revolutionary court convicted her of “propaganda against the state” and sentenced her to one year in prison. She is appealing.   In 2012, Saudi Arabia allowed two women, at the last moment, to compete at the London Summer Games. But it still forbids sports for all girls in state schools and has no women’s sports federations. The Saudis should win a gold medal in brazenness for sending a 199-member men-only team to last fall’s Asian Games, claiming, “Technically, we weren’t ready to introduce any ladies.”   Human rights and sports crises are not limited to the Olympics. Russia, despite its record of worker abuse, was awarded the 2018 World Cup. This summer, authoritarian Azerbaijan will roll out the welcome mat for the first European Games in Baku, despite escalating repression, including the December arrest of a top investigative journalist.   As Qatar builds an estimated $200 billion of infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup, hundreds of South Asian migrant workers have died working on construction projects. FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, is ripe for institutional reform. In May, it will hold a once-in-a-generation presidential election, in which the current president, Sepp Blatter of Switzerland, will seek a fifth term against stiff competition, including Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan, who has championed reforms to advance women’s participation. Those candidates should back human-rights-based reforms to the FIFA Charter and set out their position on the human rights, discrimination, corruption and labor crises that have dogged the body.   The Olympic reforms passed in December mean that if future host countries fail in their duty to uphold rights, the I.O.C. is now obliged to enforce the terms of the hosting agreement — including the ultimate sanction of withdrawing the Olympics. And for those who break rules like nondiscrimination, the punishment should be a ban on playing and hosting, as the I.O.C. imposed on apartheid South Africa from 1964 to 1992 and Taliban-run Afghanistan from 1999 to 2002.   Mr. Bach has started the ball rolling, but with abuses mounting around global sporting events, it’s time for other sporting federations like FIFA to begin reforms. Fans, corporate sponsors and the general public are increasingly turned off by human rights violations. The I.O.C. reforms aren’t a panacea, but they represent an important step forward.   * Minky Worden, is director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015 Visit the related web page
	Ebola crisis: IMF policies led to doctor shortage and hampered response to outbreak, study says by AFP, agencies   22 Dec 2014   Researchers say the International Monetary Fund''s (IMF) policies have left healthcare systems in Ebola-affected West African countries underfunded and lacking doctors, and have hampered a coordinated response to the outbreak.   Links between the IMF and the rapid spread of the disease were examined by researchers from Cambridge University''s sociology department, with colleagues from Oxford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.   They found IMF programs held back the development of effective health systems in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - the three countries at the epicentre of the outbreak that has killed over 7,370 people.   Reforms advocated by the IMF hampered the ability of the health systems to cope with infectious disease outbreaks and other emergencies, the researchers found.   "A major reason why the Ebola outbreak spread so rapidly was the weakness of healthcare systems in the region, and it would be unfortunate if underlying causes were overlooked," Cambridge sociologist and lead study author Alexander Kentikelenis said.   "Policies advocated by the IMF have contributed to under-funded, insufficiently staffed, and poorly prepared health systems in the countries with Ebola outbreaks."   The researchers examined policies enforced by the IMF before the outbreak, using information from IMF lending programs from 1990 to 2014, and analysed their effects on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.   They found the healthcare systems were weakened by the IMF''s requirement of economic reforms that cut government spending, a requirement of caps on the public sector wage bill, and a policy of decentralised healthcare systems.   On the requirement to reduce government spending, researchers found that "such policies have been extremely strict, absorbing funds that could be directed to meeting pressing health challenges".   "In 2013, just before the Ebola outbreak, the three countries met the IMF''s economic directives, yet all failed to raise their social spending despite pressing health needs," Cambridge sociologist and study co-author Lawrence King said.   The public wage cap meant the countries were unable to hire nurses and doctors and pay them adequately, while decentralised healthcare systems made it hard to mobilise coordinated responses to outbreaks of infectious diseases such as Ebola.   A spokesman for the IMF claimed that the organisation''s mandate did not specifically include public health and that it was "untrue" that the spread of Ebola was a consequence of IMF policies.   "Such claims are based on a misunderstanding of IMF policies," the spokesman said. "Since 2009, loans from the IMF to low-income countries have been at zero interest rate, which has freed up resources for countries to spend more on health and education."   The spokesman said that the IMF had provided a $130 million financial package in September towards Ebola, and that they were working towards offering a package worth a similar amount to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone next year.   * See link below for a Lancet report. Visit the related web page
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