Skip to main content

FIFA's other struggles


Even as FIFA proves it can't hold its Blatter, other issues pertaining to its role as the global rule maker on a multitude of football competitions continue to bubble.

Kick Project doesnt have a view on veils as such, seeing it as a complex and essentially individual choice. We do feel that everyone has the right to wear what they want and to worship how they want - as long as it doesnt endanger or enrage others.

So, it is difficult to see a good justification for this FIFA decision.

We are aware of course of debates on this issue and state decisions in, for instance, France. And I am, co-incidentally, reading Orhan Pamuk's "Snow" which investigates the issue of veils and the issue of secularism versus religious fundamentalism.

Yet, do we need such debates in the world game right now? Is this FIFA's role? Seems like we're bleeding into moral and cultural decisions now and I am not sure we can allow FIFA, especially given its current travails, the trust to take an appropriate stance.

See also here for a firm view on FIFA's inappropriate meddling in this issue.

Photo Credit: MSNBC. Pic shows reaction of the team after the decision to force them to forfeit their Olympic qualifier against Jordan.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Post-UNOSDP - Is the IOC fool's gold?

This is a longer version of an article published on SportandDev.org With the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace closed down by the global body, there is undoubtedly a void in this space in which many of us here work. But, for all the high profile oomph the UNOSDP added to the world of sport for good, it’s passing need not be seen as devastating. For one, the work the UNOSDP has already done in its 16 years of life has laid a platform for the development of sport for social justice. While many of us knew for years that sport had a wider purpose beyond mere business or entertainment, the UNOSDP has provided a base of credibility that may have otherwise taken much longer to establish. While much of the work is, in many ways, still to be done, the UNOSDP has left a positive legacy on which we can all build. More problematic is the shifting of the UNOSDP’s brief to the IOC. Obliging the IOC to administer to the peace and development facets ...

Statement on Funding for the Rohingya Football Club

We are very pleased to announce that The Kick Project has received a $AUD16,500 donation from the Australian Government to fund a pilot soccer program with Rohingya refugees in Malaysia. The funds, coming through the Australian High Commission in Malaysia, will allow the charity to support the Rohingya Football Club which has become a vital part of the exiled Rohingya community in Kuala Lumpur. The program entails kitting out the team, providing transport to games and establishing a sports and community hub where Rohingya people can access sporting equipment and coaching. Young people, and girls in particular, are the long term focus of the initiative. The Kick Project founder James Rose says the Rohingya are in dire need of assistance. "The UN has called the Rohingya arguably the most persecuted group in the world. They've been forced to flee their homelands in Myanmar, where they have been made stateless by government decree, and many have lost their lives...

In these times, find the joy of being human

The election of Donald J Trump as America's 45th President, confirmed in this week's inauguration, presents numerous challenges to human rights and people power. The boorish, misogynistic, arrogant tenor of his campaign has cast a pall over the rights of minorities in America and across the globe as his "America First" call, by definition, puts everyone else second or worse. The only equality in the scenario he presents is of the George Orwell type: that of some being more equal than others. Such a situation already exists of course. Western males wield more direct and indirect power in global terms than, say, a dark-skinned girl in a slum. Trump is hardly breaking new ground. But, his ascendancy gives that dark reality more momentum. It puts it closer to the centre of normal. His message threatens to break the positive values that link human beings to each other. Globally, governments, civil society and civilians need to make a stand. We need to step up to...