In an off-field victory for human rights, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has reversed its sponsorship plans with Go to Saudi, Saudi Arabia’s state tourism authority, for the 2023 Women’s Globe Cup. The Women’s Globe Cup is the flagship worldwide women’s football occasion and has lengthy been a moment to celebrate women’s rights and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights and inclusion.

FIFA’s decision to award Visit Saudi sponsorship of the Women’s Globe Cup showed shocking disregard for the repression and suffering of Saudi Arabia’s courageous women’s rights defenders, which leading female players rightly condemned as an “own purpose.”

Saudi Arabia is a worldwide outlier on women’s rights and also violates the rights of LGBT persons. As not too long ago as 2018, females and girls were barred from sport in schools – or even watching sporting events in stadiums. On International Women’s Day in 2022, Saudi authorities passed Saudi Arabia’s very first Private Status Law, which codifies repressive male guardianship guidelines and incorporates discriminatory provisions against females regarding marriage, divorce, and choices about their young children. In August 2022, Saudi Arabia sentenced Salma Al-Shehab, a Saudi doctoral student who had been studying in the United Kingdom, to 34 years in prison for her use of Twitter.

Human Rights Watch has documented Saudi Arabia’s longstanding practice of “sportswashing,” which requires spending billions of dollars hosting significant sporting, entertainment, and cultural events as a deliberate tactic to deflect criticism from the country’s pervasive and systemic violations of human rights.

Human Rights Watch wrote to FIFA on February three to underscore the contradiction amongst Saudi Arabia’s Tourism Authority sponsorship of the Women’s Globe Cup and the football body’s claims that human rights are a crucial portion of its values. We also asked FIFA what consultation with players, host nations, and other stakeholders it undertook just before signing off on the sponsorship deal. FIFA has not replied to the letter.

FIFA has incorporated human rights because 2016 and adopted a human rights policy stating that “human rights commitments are binding on all FIFA bodies and officials.” In practice, it has not normally lived up to these pledges.

Ladies football players are appropriate to protest that their game was getting monetized by FIFA, without safety, access, equal pay for equal operate, consultation, or permission.

FIFA’s selection to reverse the Go to Saudi sponsorship of the Women’s Globe Cup need to be a very first step toward constant due diligence and remedy on human rights across all of its operations.