FIFA violates own statutes by delaying decision on Israeli settlement clubs — HRW

AMMAN — FIFA President Gianni Infantino on Thursday won yet another delay on deciding whether to allow the Israel Football Association (IFA) to continue holding games in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, keeping FIFA in direct violation of its own statutes and commitment to respect human rights, global rights body Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. 

Infantino won a 72 per cent majority in FIFA’s Congress — its general assembly — to delay a decision on the issue for a fifth year, until March 2018, HRW said in a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times.

“Today’s decision to delay means FIFA will continue sponsoring games on stolen land, contrary to its statutes and human rights responsibilities,” the statement quoted Sari Bashi, Israel and Palestine advocacy director at HRW, as saying. 

“After four years, it’s not clear why FIFA needs yet another year to decide whether or not to follow its own rules.”

At Thursday's congress in Bahrain, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) proposed a resolution to require the IFA to stop holding games in settlements in the West Bank, considered by FIFA to be part of the PFA’s territory. FIFA’s statutes prohibit a member association from holding games on the territory of another member association without its permission, the statement said.

Infantino "pre-empted that vote with his own proposal", which the congress approved, that the decision on the settlement clubs be transferred to FIFA’s council, a 31-member governing body led by Infantino. 

"The proposal that the congress approved gave a deadline of March 2018, but Infantino said he would put the settlement club issue on the agenda of an October 27, 2017 FIFA Council meeting," the HRW statement said.

Thursday's move came after FIFA’s council announced on Tuesday that a decision on the settlement clubs would be “premature”. Infantino told the congress Thursday that "the council’s recommendation was unanimous".

FIFA has been confronted by this issue since 2013. In 2015, it appointed a special monitoring committee, chaired by Tokyo Sexwale, to resolve the issue within a year. 

Sexwale and Infantino requested an extension of the mandate, promising a decision by October 2016, then by January 2017, and then by
March 2017. 

Sexwale said in October 2016 that the issue was “almost in extra time”. 

In a draft report he presented to the Israeli and Palestinian football associations in March 2017, Sexwale said that further negotiation over the issue would be futile, given the time elapsed and the gap between the parties and wrote: “What FIFA cannot avoid is taking a decision on this matter.”

Yet, Infantino told the congress that he received Sexwale’s “final” report only Wednesday. 

Following the vote, he told a press conference that council members did not receive a written report from Sexwale in their Tuesday meeting and did not have a chance to study it.

Human Rights Watch, Avaaz, and EuMEP have called on FIFA to bar its Israeli affiliate from organising football activities in West Bank settlements, because those settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention and contribute to serious human rights abuses. 

Six IFA clubs are based in settlements and host their official home matches there, on land unlawfully taken from and off-limits to West Bank Palestinians.

In April 2016, professor John Ruggie authored a report for FIFA on how the body needs to entrench human rights across the federation’s operations. 

Ruggie’s recommendations for FIFA, according to HRW, are based on the United Nations  Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the global standard on these fields.

When Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, FIFA’s European affiliate UEFA blocked Russia from incorporating teams from Crimea in its national league, on the basis of the same rule, noted the rights body

PFA President Jibril Rajoub told the FIFA Congress that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to pressure FIFA to delay the vote.

Infantino, who was elected president last year on a platform of reform, has been criticised in recent days for "making structural changes that bring internal oversight mechanisms under his control and for pushing out the head of FIFA’s governance committee".

“Infantino’s insistence on pushing through a vote to delay a determination on the settlement club issue shows he is in no hurry to put into practice his promises to bring FIFA into compliance with basic principles of good governance and human rights,” Bashi said.