– We haven’t really got any results for what we wanted in the short term, and then I think that a boycott would have been right. The most powerful tool we have is a boycott, says Ole Kristian Sandvik to news. The spokesman for the Norwegian Supporters’ Alliance has been at the forefront of the boycott campaign against the football World Cup in Qatar and still believes that the Norwegian Football Association (NFF) made a mistake by choosing dialogue with Fifa and Qatar over a boycott. Norway’s football president believes it will take longer before conclusions can be drawn. – This is a marathon that Norwegian football has said we will run with, says Lise Klaveness to news. – Very bad The awarding of the World Cup to Qatar has been controversial and Qatar has for a long time been criticized for very poor working conditions for several thousand migrant workers. The discrimination against LGBT+ people in the country also initially led to strong protests in the Western world. BOYCOTT: Ole Kristian Sandvik did not see a single minute of the WC in Qatar. He has always wanted the NFF to boycott, and still believes that would be the right solution. Photo: Oda Scheel Sandvik brags about the work Lise Klaveness and the football association have done, but still believes that nothing has happened in Qatar after the football World Cup is now over. – Now they turn off the floodlights in Qatar, and experience from previous championships is that the sport doesn’t care that much more then, unfortunately. I am afraid that it will apply now as well, says the spokesman for the Norwegian Supporters’ Alliance. – I am sure that if we had boycotted there would have been media reports all over the world. Several had received attention for the cause we stand for. Also, what happened at the start of the WC, with the protest after the rainbow no, had still happened. With a country that boycotted, you could have started the “snowball” earlier, says Sandvik. – You are in favor of a boycott, but at the same time say that the snowball has started to roll. Would it have worked if there had been a boycott? – Now Norway was not in the WC, and the snowball has started to roll. So you have achieved something even if you did not participate in sports. The supporter leader believes that the choice to go for dialogue with Qatar was a big challenge. – Qatar is a country where it is very difficult to get any impact and it is very difficult to have dialogue when one party does not want it. Some (of the NFF’s work) is good, but a lot is bad, if you look at the results, says Sandvik. CRITICISM: Fifa president Gianni Infantino was criticized for not allowing teams to play with rainbow armbands. Here he points to the armband that German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wore as a protest against the teams not being allowed to wear it. He also points out that Infantino has become an even more controversial man after the World Cup and that it does not seem as if Fifa is particularly willing to change. – It has probably been simmering in the back room for a long time. It came to light at the start of the World Cup, due to very poor handling. Then it is interesting that Fifa meets at the door, because they do not allow rainbow captain’s armbands, but they do allow the Palestinian flag, which is obviously a political symbol, says Sandvik. I think the line of dialogue was correct. Sandvik was put on the committee that was supposed to look at how the NFF should best deal with the World Cup in Qatar. He has wanted a boycott all along, but at the extraordinary football meeting in June last year, football chose not to boycott. Instead, one had to work with 26 points to get a change. The measures the NFF adopted at the confederation on 20 June, it was decided that the NFF will work on 26 measures to improve the human rights situation in Qatar and ensure that football/sport takes greater responsibility in such matters. The Football Association must: Immediately react to FIFA when the NFF becomes aware of new serious events in Qatar, to ask them to use FIFA’s influence on the Supreme Committee and the authorities in Qatar to achieve the fastest possible change. Ask FIFA to work with Qatari authorities to establish strengthened inspection mechanisms to quickly detect and stop worker abuse. Work for FIFA to demand that the authorities in Qatar improve the legal security of migrant workers through mechanisms that ensure that employers who exploit workers are held accountable. Challenge FIFA to take further measures to ensure respect for workers’ right to organize in associations. Support the start-up of a Migrant Worker Resource Center that is being established by providing seed capital, and strongly encourage FIFA to do the same. Demand that FIFA take an active role to help ensure that workers who have been involved in the construction of the stadium and infrastructure associated with the World Cup in Qatar get what they are entitled to. This means, among other things, that FIFA must be kept informed by the Supreme Committee about non-compliance, and follow up on the Supreme Committee’s work with the affected workers. Ask FIFA to demand a guarantee from the authorities in Qatar that free press must have access to the country and its facilities before during and after the championship. This means easy access to visas for all journalists who want it. The role of the press is particularly important to ensure the quality of information provided and follow-up of conditions in the country. Demand that the authorities in Qatar take sufficient measures to ensure that LGBTQ+ people feel welcome and safe as participants or guests in the World Cup. Set demands on FIFA that a permanent, independent human rights committee becomes a central part of the FIFA structure. Members of the committee must be nominated by internationally recognized human rights organizations and other relevant and independent actors such as the UN, trade unions, academia, civil society and business. Actively work for FIFA to put in place a system that ensures transparency and independence in nominations to independent bodies in FIFA. Demand that FIFA undertake to follow the procedure and award criteria they decided in 2016 in all future championships under FIFA’s auspices. Take initiative with UEFA to ensure that their award criteria and procedures have the same minimum requirements as FIFA. Get a binding confirmation from FIFA that in all future championships they will create detailed strategies for the actual implementation of the championship. While awarding requirements and policy have been made permanent in FIFA, the framework for the actual implementation only applies to the championship in Qatar. Work to ensure that future awards are withdrawn if the host country has not met FIFA’s concrete demands for change within a given time frame. Make a demand that it is a prerequisite that all championships give free press access to the country and the facilities before, during and after the championship. This must also include the Club WC that has already been awarded. Make demands on FIFA for quarterly reports to all confederations about the preparations for the championship in Qatar, with clear measurement parameters. Ensure that FIFA’s regulations with requirements for human rights in awarding are followed in all votes in the FIFA Congress, and that no championships are awarded outside of this regime. Take the initiative for the Norwegian Sports Confederation and the Norwegian Olympic Committee to carry out an inclusive process to agree on how we can together build and rebuild trust in sport’s international value base, through concrete steps and measures that will prevent sports laundering and contribute to strengthening human rights. This means, among other things, that the free press must have access to all championships and the Olympic Games. More clearly enshrined in the Football Association’s strategy that respect for human rights is a central part of Norwegian football’s international interests. Develop a strategy for how Norwegian football can strengthen its participation and influence in international forums and committees in order to gain influence for Norwegian football’s adopted priorities, especially the work for human rights, participation and equality, and against sports laundering and corruption. Assess Norwegian football’s procedures to decide which candidacy for organizer of championships the NFF supports. Set up a committee to propose directive regulations for Norwegian football and human rights issues. Reviews the Ethics Committee’s mandate and function and gives it control responsibility for the measures adopted by the Bundestag to be carried out to strengthen human rights work. This involves a report to the Swedish Confederation on the implementation of the decisions, initially to the ordinary Swedish Confederation in 20 In order to ensure that the Ethics Committee has sufficient capacity and competence to take care of this additional task, the committee encourages the extraordinary Swedish Council to consider a decision on to expand the number of members. Become a member of the UN Global Compact and work for FIFA to do the same. Ensure that the NFF acts as a “responsible customer” for Norwegian participation internationally by choosing suppliers who can show that they work actively to avoid being involved in gross human rights violations/violations of workers’ rights. Introduce routines so that players and support staff on the national teams and club teams are offered a thorough introduction to the human rights situation in the countries they will be visiting in order to create security and facilitate informed, individual choices regarding e.g. exercise of freedom of expression. Report to each federal parliament on the work with human rights in general, and follow-up on the specific decisions the federal parliament has adopted regarding human rights in particular. The head of the committee, Sven Mollekleiv, is responsible for the report and that the wisest thing was to drop the boycott. COMMITTEE CHAIR: Sven Mollekleiv. Photo: Geir Olsen / NTB – I think that all the 26 points that we recommended to the football committee were correct. There were demands for Qatar, demands for Fifa, demands for Uefa, demands for the NFF and demands for Norwegian sports and Norwegian society. We stand behind that and they have done well, says Mollekleiv today. He thinks the football association has done a good job, but at the same time acknowledges that they have not achieved very much. He emphasizes that such work takes time. At the same time, Mollekleiv also sees that the division between Europe and Fifa is about to get bigger. – Raising your voice, as Lise and the NFF have done, is right. But it is a work that must continue. And it must happen through the channels where the decisions are made. Alliances must be created in Uefa, Mollekleiv believes. NFF: – Still a long way to go Even though Mollekleiv and Sandvik were on the committee that proposed the 26 measures, it has been the NFF’s job to follow them up. Football president Lise Klaveness is completely honest that it has been demanding to actually get approval for changes. – Do you feel that the dialogue has worked in one way or another? – Yes. It depends on what you mean. It is not like we are sitting with a political key that makes the Qatari kafala system better or worse at one or two meetings, says Lise Klaveness. She points out, for example, that the NFF has been involved in creating a larger debate about the World Cup in Qatar. Both in Norway and in Europe, the media have produced a number of critical issues about both the host country and Fifa. Among other things, it created international attention when Klaveness took the podium at the Fifa congress and criticized both Qatar and Fifa’s work. CONGRESS: Lise Klaveness addressed both Fifa and Qatar opposite each other at the Fifa Congress in Doha in March. Photo: Hassan Ammar / AP She does not want to enter into an evaluation of whether the football association has done enough and whether the 26 measures that were adopted at the extraordinary congress have been followed up sufficiently. It is the ethics committee in the NFF that will make an assessment of this and present it to the football parliament in March. – It is others than me who have to say something overarching whether we have succeeded or not. My job and ours is to implement this. We try to do that in as good a way as we can. We try to be conscientious, informed and prepared. We work broadly, this is not a solo race from Norway. We try to get as many countries as possible with us, knowing that this is never a case where we get to the finish line and where we can say to the media that “jeez, we reached those goals”. It is far too abstract for that, says Klaveness. – But there is still a long way to go before we can say that international football is sincerely and seriously built on the values contained in our own rules. It is worrying and Norwegian football cannot do it alone. We must be a clear voice there, and we are, she adds.
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