Identifying Opportunities for National Human Rights Institutions to Engage with Sport

On 3 September 2019 the Centre partnered with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Commonwealth Forum of National Human Rights Institutions to facilitate a day-long ‘Sport and Human Rights’ workshop for representatives of sixteen NHRIs from across the Commonwealth. The workshop explored the role of NHRIs as key enablers for sports bodies to work through human rights challenges they encounter, as well as being a partner that Commonwealth Games Associations (CGAs) can call upon as they look to implement the Commonwealth Sport Human Rights Strategy. We were also honoured to have the session opened by Evode Uwizeyimana, Rwanda’s Minister of State for Constitutional and Legal Affairs who reflected on the importance of the Sporting Chance Principles in national contexts. We believe this is the start of a journey to support and facilitate NHRIs in their on-going engagement with the sports sector and in encouraging NHRIs around the world to collaborate with sports organisations.