 Welcome to the slightly delayed event. I'm sorry for all the drama that appeared to have taken place in the previous room we were meant to be in. And the fact that there's now been a little bit of confusion as to where we are. But nevertheless, here we are. Welcome to all of you. My name is Lina Ventland. I work in the UN Human Rights Office. I oversee our work on business and human rights. And I've also been very closely involved in the efforts in the sports and human rights agenda, particularly aimed at embedding the UN Guiding Principles and other UN standards into the world of sport. So this is the first high-level dialogue. It's part of the UN Human Rights Office celebration campaign to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Celebrate is the word we're doing. We're celebrating this amazing document. And we're using the anniversary to leverage for good effect in terms of visibility, thought leadership and influence of new audiences and having these kinds of high-level dialogues with the High Commissioner and other global leaders. So as I mentioned, this is the first in the series. There will be others, including one featuring the President of the International of the ICJ and also one with a noted lawyer and jurist, Mr. Ben Forince. So I would like to, I'm not sure our two thought leaders here needs a lot of introduction, but I will start by just welcoming and introducing President Bach. Thomas Bach, who has been President of the IOC since 2013. And holds a doctorate in law, but perhaps for two days' purposes. He also holds a very impressive record as a competitive athlete and was an Olympic team foil fencer. And I must confess, I had to look up exactly what that meant, but I gather that it's the type of weapon that is used. So President Bach won the Olympic team gold medal in 1976 and was also on the world champion team winning gold, silver and bronze medals in 1973, 1977 and 1979. So welcome very much President Bach to this conversation, which we look forward to hearing your insights. The High Commissioner for Human Rights, my boss, until September at least. The High Commissioner assumed office in 2014. I'm not sure he needs a lot of introduction in this room, but he was of course the former ambassador of Jordan and our website, his bio, he's described as a veteran multilateral diplomat. And I think that covers a very long list of speeches. I also noted that he holds a doctorate of philosophy, which makes a lot of sense actually. Now that I know that, just in terms of how you have approached the office and engaged on the issues in your time as High Commissioner. So the aim of today's event is to reflect on the interface between sport and human rights and on how we can ensure both that human rights are respected in sport, but also how it's realized through sport. It's an issue that the Human Rights Council is increasingly taking up through various resolutions. We also have this year's social forum in October focused on this interface. So it's a very topical issue. It's a growing agenda, also at the international level. So just a few sort of rules of the game very quickly. So it's, as I mentioned, celebration of UDHR 70th. We are seeking to create an atmosphere that is informal and personal. So this is not about giving formal statements or official positioning. This really is, we're seeking and inviting personal reflections from these two thought leaders. And the seating, yes. And I mean, all evidence to the contrary. But let's just try to overcome those obstacles and try to realize at least that part of the aim. So a conversation, personal reflections. We will have time for some Q&A at the end and we are hoping that the Q&A will be conducted in the similar spirit. So very much personal reflections and suggestions rather than formal statements. So we're seeking to cover broadly three broad segments. The interface between sport and human rights has expressed both in the Olympic Charter and the UDHR. And the opportunities to realize human rights through sport, but importantly as well, how to ensure, prevent and mitigate risks related to sport. I will try to moderate and for those of you in the room that are government delegates will know that moderating the High Commissioner in particular might, can be a challenging exercise, I will try to do my best to steer the conversation. But I'm confident that we will cover broadly these... They have to say this now. Yeah, no. I can say this now. But first of all, to kick off, we'll start by indeed some personal reflections. What sport means to you as individuals? What qualities has it brought to your lives? What can sport teachers about life? And I will start by you, with you President Buck, growing up involved in sport as you did. Rules, fairness, how did it impact you as a person? And how do you take that into a discussion like the one we have today? How long time do you have? Well, I'll just wave the flag. I think if I would have to sum this up, there in the end would be one word, it would be respect. It would be a respect for others, it would be a respect for rules, it would be respect for yourself and your limits, also to respect your limits. And by saying respect for others to get to learn how to deal with victory in defeat. So to know that the victory does not make you superior to somebody else. And that on the other hand, defeat is not the end of everything. But that it can just be a new beginning and that you can maybe learn from a defeat more than from a victory. And then respect for rules, this also means that first of all it's key to the functioning of sport. And this is what makes sport unique. I think it's the only area of our life where we have a world law or how the philosophers would say world ethos. And where everybody needs to respect this and where you can really enforce it also worldwide. So it's not just a shallow framework, but it's something you can enforce. And there you learn that a society, be it just your very small environment, be it your club, be it society at large, can only work if there is respect for these rules, for this law. So in the end it's respect and if you ask then for the real feelings, it's joy. Because sport gives joy. And there we even have in the Olympic charter a wording which speaks about the joy in effort. I admit that this has been written by a chairman, but there is indeed a joy in effort. Thank you very much. High Commissioner, I didn't see on your CV that you had been a professional athlete exactly. But I know that you do enjoy sport and I imagine that a lot of what the President was saying around respect for rules, enforcement of laws, etc. does resonate a lot also in your professional capacity. But your personal perspective to start. Thank you very much, Lena. I did notice that you didn't mention anything of my sporting prowess when I was young. And I think the President is absolutely right. It's one of the key pillars of education as you grow up. You're educated in your home, you follow example. And one of the earliest memories many of us will have is playing in a playground or in a backyard of someone's home kicking a ball. And it's one of those central building blocks of one's personality, one's character, understanding as the President was saying that you have to operate in a system of rules. And very soon the rules have to also be applied. And the very ethic of the training required, the practices, you have to turn up it. And one always remembers no matter where one's growing up, where it's often the weather would be terrible and you are cold or raining or snowy or hot and humid and you were practicing. And it was all part of growing up and understanding how fundamental sport is to a dignified life. But to build on the President's point, I was not a fencer. And it's a sport though that I've always admired. And I have two children who were competitive fencers. They have to be brought back in, they've strayed a little bit from the path. And they were competitive in foil as well. And there was one very intense competition where there was one very intense competition where there was so much noise and my son was fencing against a younger fencer in an auditorium where there was so much noise between the points and an enormous amount of shouting from the coaches during the breaks and the families also very much engaged and intense. And my son beat this other competitor convincingly. In actual fact it was at the end, he almost destroyed him. And what was so extraordinary is that this little boy, after they finished saluting and they went up to shake hands, he really looked into my son's face and said, you really did well and congratulations. And he meant it. And I thought to myself, in this hall with a few hundred people, many adults, many trainers and the coaches and the teams, that this graciousness shown by this young boy made him the most dignified human being in that hall that day. That there was something elevated about it. And then it sort of raises this other question of yes, the literal benefits of sport to all of us, how it fulfills a sort of a deep-seated need, but then the representation of life, what it means for us is a representation of life and it's drawing by analogy. One of the examples I use and I've often reminded by those who've heard me say it before, I used to play the game of rugby a great deal. And what struck out, what was obvious to me from the very beginning is you could be a winning team dependent on a small number of really excellent players. That to win or to score, you didn't need to have an outstanding 15. You could have an outstanding seven or eight and they'll carry the rest of us. But to defend when you're absolutely on your line, then everyone had to show excellence. Everyone had to play that part. And in life, I think it's the same. I think when we're finding that we're struggling for the existence of a thought, a principle, an idea, that we all have to play a part in defending it. And I think in the human rights context, that's clearly where we are now in this space. And so sport teaches one a great deal beyond the mental and physical energies that need to be expired to succeed in a particular event. And I think your point also about how one copes with loss, the loss of a game, the loss of a particular race and the internalizing that must take place and the value of society on that and how we view ourselves vis-à-vis society and why we should or should not attach an external marker. The very notion within the Olympic idea that it's the participation above all, which is the key thing, irrespective of nationality and all the other markers that define us as human beings, I think is just something that is really at the core of what makes us human and why it has to be so celebrated and celebrated time and again. So I'm very delighted to have this conversation, even though I'm not a sportsman of President Bach's caliber. Although maybe I'm not bad at table tennis, I need to find a sport that I can challenge you. If I would have known this, I would have invited you to our Olympic Day celebration last Friday. I was playing table tennis with the North and South Korean table tennis players and the Japanese and the Chinese, so you would have made really added value there. Thank you very much. Well, the other thing then is that it connects everyone with their youth. It's something that you try and do throughout your life. You try and stay connected to some physical activity, some mental activity, but for most people it's a connection to a youth and memory that is meaningful and deep and shaping who it is that we are. And I think that's really a wonderful thing because it's never too far away. I had the similar experience once where I was at a retreat on Security Council reform. And there were four ambassadors who were engaged in intense discussions. And we saw a table tennis table, so we said, let's take a break and we went and started to play. And it was amazing. In the beginning we were all laughing and joking, and then the laughs and the jokes disappeared. Who won? Well, that's not Peter Maurer, so I've argued him and he was part of it. But I think it's the enjoyment and the fact that it connects us to a past as well and a formative past for everyone, which is so important. And I guess as we're seeing these days bringing people together, you can't walk anywhere in Geneva at the moment without running into a big screen and people standing around and watching and coming together in a way, even if only for the 15 minutes as they're passing the road, but also in their homes. So it's this notion of convening, of bringing people together. But if we link it then a little bit more directly to the notions, the foundational values of human rights, we've heard the word dignity, respect, fairness, rules of the game, enforcement. And so that really, I guess, is where those worlds are very well matched, for lack of a better word. And High Commissioner, if you want to just take a couple of minutes to reflect a little bit more deeply on the UDHR and how the kinds of values that you've both been talking about, how they are expressed and what value comes from having them expressed in a document like the Universal Declaration. I think the key word, of course, is universal, and that applies to both of the organizations or the organization and our office. And it's brought out in the preamble of the Universal Declaration, actually in the first article that all people are born free in dignity and rights. And subsequent to that in the 30 articles that follow, about a third link directly in some way or another to sport. And it's the notion that you are judged on the excellence of your activity, on the effort that you put into a particular activity where the rules are defined and there is fairness that is brought out. And you are not judged on any other criteria than that. So on all the criteria that are enumerated in the various legal instruments as a means of preventing discrimination in sport, that should not and does not come into being. And we celebrate, and I think we were discussing this beforehand, when watching an Olympic event, we celebrate outstanding performance. All the other criteria that attach to it, of the nationality of the individual, the particular color, the religion, the race, the ethnicity, whatever the criteria may be, is second or actually almost irrelevant to the performance itself. It's the beauty, the grace, the power of the performance, which I think all of us celebrate as human beings, that there are some amazing people on this planet. And I think this is what binds us as a human race. And we have to be careful that in our celebrations, that we don't become, as we were saying earlier, that we don't cross the line and become chauvinistic nationalists where you wish for the sake of victory, the destruction of someone else's future, their life and so forth. And that's why I think it's so important that we maintain the universal spirit that both is evoked within the IOC and what we're trying to do. But clearly there is, and we'll get into some of the detail now in a few minutes, I mean, there are more specific things that we need to pay attention to. But, you know, the overlap is really quite astonishing. And so I'm delighted to be sharing the podium with President Bach today. President Bach, if you can pick up from there, and I mean, it's often said that the Olympic movement is a values-based organisation. You have some of these fundamental values expressed in your charter. So if you can continue some of those reflections from the perspective of the Olympic charter. I could make my life very easy and just say I have nothing to add. And I'm only happy that we don't have IOC presidential elections this October. But I have to be a gold medalist. Because the High Commissioner really summed it up in a perfect way. It's about universality and it's about non-discrimination. And therefore in sport, and there I can make reference to what I said before, that these world law of sports, because of these world law of sports, we are in fact, we are all equal. There on the field of play, you're alone and you're equal to all the others. And then with regard to universality, there the Olympic Games have a special meaning. Because in the Olympic Games, you have in fact all 206 national Olympic committees participating. So you have the whole world together at one place, at one time. It's almost like the rules of the old Greek drama. And in addition, and this is maybe the most valuable message and experience also for any Olympic athletes, you do not have them only together at one place, they are living together in one Olympic village. So they share their meals, they get to know each other, they share their emotions. And then the next day they are going to compete against each other. And then they are coming back from competition and then they meet each other again. And continue their discussion, maybe understand each other even better than before. So it's this kind of universal character, what makes in the Olympic village, what makes the Olympic Games so unique. This you don't have anywhere else. And to demonstrate that this is so important for us, for our mission, for our values, we have even made it obligatory for all national Olympic committees to participate in the Games. So that, you know, any kind of non-appearance, let's say for reasons of discrimination, be it political, be it racial, be it religious whatsoever, would be an infringement of the Olympic charter and then could and would be sanctioned. So there to show that to make this little universe functioning, everybody has to make its contribution. And if one is missing, it is already against our values, against the spirit, against our mission. I understand also you like to stay there during the Games, or didn't you say that you like to spend as much time in the village? If you meet fellow Olympians, I will not repeat the year you gave them, because this was not so charming. All the rest was correct, but whenever the fellow Olympians meet among themselves and then start to exchange memories, it doesn't last two minutes until they speak about the experience in the village, because there is the world in one place, in one cafeteria, you see the whole world together, and there you should have seen maybe the reaction of the athletes from these 206 national Olympic committees to the refugee Olympic team, which we created for the first time in Rio 2016. How there, the power of sport for inclusion was obvious. They were like pop stars among the other athletes, all the other athletes, they may have won five gold medals or participated in four games, they went there, they wanted to show them you are part of us. You are on the equal basis, you are not a refugee, you are an athlete here, and as athletes we are all equal. So these are these experiences which you can only make in an Olympic village, this is why I always ask the organizing committees to reserve a room for me in the village so that I can stay there, but I have to admit it doesn't work the way I wanted it to work. It's maybe one or two nights where I can manage, but then being there and going to the breakfast, and there sitting then with the athletes discussing in an open way, this is what the Olympic idea is about. Can I ask a question? Without dwelling on how young you are. Thank you. It's already a good start for a tricky question. I'm beginning my campaign. When you were competing, Thomas, it was still the Cold War, the world was very much still divided ideologically, and your country was divided along those lines. Was it still clear that athletes from east and west would mix and talk? Did it feel like a safe space in those years during the time of the Cold War? Was it more open than anywhere else that you'd have perhaps? First of all, the Cold War and all its effects on sports is the reason why I'm sitting here today. Because I was there, the speaker of the German athletes, around the discussion of the boycott of the Moscow Games. And there, despite fighting hard, and there we are coming back to the lessons being learned in sport, despite fighting hard against this boycott for the reasons we discussed, we lost. And we had to boycott then the Games. Something where all the politicians who then were calling for it after some years at the latest, they said it was a mistake. But this was too late for us. You could have won more gold medals, basically. Maybe. But this was the moment, then after this, then the then president of the National Olympic Committee came to see me and said, you know, could you imagine also to work on the management side of a sport and there in the National Olympic Committee? And there where I said, yes. And he said, don't you want to think about? And I said, no. And he said, why? And I said, because I do not want to happen what happened to us to future generations of athletes and to sport. And there we had already a feeling for these powers. But as an athlete, you don't think when I was competing for the first time in the Games, I had no idea what the IOC saw what they would do. The only important thing was it functions and you can get enough to eat and you can train and you can compete. This is it. But then you could feel this power of sport exactly in this context you are referring to because there even, you know, they are the teams of, let's say, the East Germany GDR at the time or USSR at the time. There were secret service people with them. But we always found a way to meet under the shower and there to trade then some goods there or to discuss or to disappear there somewhere in a break to be in contact and even if it was only at the handshake where you would whisper something into somebody's ear. So we had this feeling of a sport and athletes, a community. Solidarity between athletes. Despite all these political circumstances and problems. Can I just segue from that? I mean the sort of politicization of sport is obviously one issue but I see a number of the people in the room engaged in the mega sporting event platform, the Centre for Human Rights, the concerns that already also your organization, the IOC has taken up in terms of making efforts to prevent and mitigate the sort of darker underbelly of sport. We've now heard, I think, very powerful testimony as to what is the power of sport. Also when it comes to human rights, realising sport both in the competition amongst individuals, players, athletes and between communities. But there is this growing realisation that all these positive contributions notwithstanding there can be quite significant levels of risk to human rights. So not wanting to stop realising all the positive contributions but making sure that the risks don't get in the way of realising that full potential. So maybe as the High Commissioner, the approaches to prevent and mitigate human rights risks in sport, you've been very supportive of the UN Human Rights Office engaging in some of these discussions focused around the UN guiding principles, embedding into the organisation of sport and the life cycle of sport but also through our work on non-discrimination and to discrimination efforts, for example, that has gone into organising the FIFA World Cup in Russia. So if you want to reflect a little bit on how that is the sort of other leg of the work that we also need to be cognisant of and the power of collective action. And it's a natural question that sort of comes following what I think in particular President Bach has said because if you take the overall emotional experience connected to sport, the intensity of the joy, the sadness when a particular team loses or you may not do so well and then how one resolves to gather strength from it and the intensity of it means that there are always going to be attempts perhaps to subvert, to undermine, to cut corners and for that reason, of course, you have the IOC, its infrastructure and the enjoyment of sport is something that all of us believe it is something so fundamental to human existence. So when it comes to issues related to, as we've seen in other contexts, the creation of sports facilities, that the approach to construction, the approach to the issue of how one deals with labour rights and all of that and it's well developed in other sporting forums, that this is done in a way that's transparent, that's open and that the enjoyment of sport, the participation of the athletes is done without it being at the expense of others whose experience is less than that and I think the commitments both by the IOC and ourselves and others to ensure that we don't have that and we encourage that all will abide by the guiding principles that if that company is associated with particular contracts that they have clear and clean supply chains, global supply chains, that they take mitigating measures, ensure that there is human rights due diligence being applied, look at the impact, the social and environmental impacts, human rights impacts of any particular project and I think the more sensitive they are, the more we can iron them out and have a future where mega sporting events and ourselves we're working cohesively as one community trying to promote a human activity which is at the core of what it means to be human and I think if we can do that, then we're doing very well. One should also say that sport is really no different from any other critical human activity because in other parts of life we face similar pressures that with excellence comes attempts to cut corners here and there in any activity and so I wish I could say that the human species is reliable enough not to require laws, not to require regulations that we just on reason alone would do the right thing. We're not there yet, we need laws, we need human rights laws, we need regulations, we need oversight, we need transparency and maybe in the future our successors as humans will get to that stage but at the moment that's where we are and so a good conscience approach to that to iron out discrimination and any violations that may creep into sporting events which generally tends to spoil the activity and we've seen in certain sporting domains and one remembers what the cycling world had to go through with Lance Armstrong and the discovery of what he was up to and what effect it had on young athletes and people who looked up to champions as holding up an ideal and then it comes crashing down and in all sports where there is an attempt to succeed but fraudulently you hope that their regulatory framework and the transparency is such that it roots it out and it goes back to your point about fairness and having a level playing field and that's I think the point that we want to make. The guiding principles on business and human rights have a very explicit statement that there are no offsets in human rights so doing good in one sense doesn't offset harm and I guess for the IOC who have contributed very actively in the platform for mega sporting event in human rights but you've also taken steps I know that in the bidding criteria for upcoming games to embed some of these human rights standards in the documents that you are working with to ensure that these games are organized in a way that take account for and mitigate the risks and ask those who are involved with hosting games to take steps so if you would like President Bach before we turn over to questions from the audience to reflect on the kinds of activities and engagement that you've had to also manage that side of the work of the organization. Thank you very much. May I just with one sentence try to continue the thought of the High Commissioner because I'm afraid that in this one point I'm a little bit less optimistic usually I'm a great optimist but in this one point you made I may be a little bit less optimistic about the future of humankind and that our success as human beings will one day not need rules and live the values. There I'm a little bit skeptical because I think humankind has tried for thousands of years and we have lost since thousands of years and still we need laws, we need police we have to realize that and they're taking your doping example and Lance Armstrong and others that obviously when human beings are competing with each other that you will always have some who try to cheat whether this is in business or whether it is in sport. So we have to address this we have to realize this that we always will have to defend our values that most likely there will not be the day where we can say today we have accomplished our mission our values are realized. I guess this is an ongoing effort and this leads me then to the responsibility of organizations like ours. Where is our responsibility and what can we do? Our responsibility I think is very clear is to ensure that the Olympic Charter which includes human rights is respected during the Olympic Games and in all our own actions for which we are responsible and there we have to create the right instruments. I made reference to some of these before because again first mission is to ensure the universality to ensure dialogue, to ensure respect for each other and in this way contribute to one of the basic human rights try to contribute to peace. What the one or the other view may have seen now what this means during the past Olympic Winter Games with regard to North and South Korea and now the ongoing efforts. There are more pragmatic issues you have mentioned this is the host city contract where we are already in the candidature phase and when we are evaluating candidatures are taking the advice there on board sometimes coming from the High Commissioner himself during a breakfast in Lausanne or at other occasions or from human rights organizations or governments. So to make this already part of the evaluation and then it continues in the host city contract where for the Games we make their certain standards including the ones on business obligatory but on the other hand we have to respect that there our authority ends. Politics cannot expect from us then to change or to solve issues what politics has not solved over centuries. So to give you an example to make it more concrete we had problems with regard to non-discrimination before the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi at the time because there was a legislation which prohibits the promotion of homosexuality in Russia. So we had this law and we had our responsibility to ensure non-discrimination for all the participants of the Games. So what did we do and what could we do? We were speaking with the Russian government and got the assurance that this law would not apply to any participant of the Olympic Games and this is how it happened. But you cannot expect from the IOC then to try to impose on a sovereign state the change of its legislation. The same applies to death penalty or whatever. There is our responsibility and this responsibility we are taking very serious with regard to different actions. We have a part of our own leader in another platform called IPEX which concerns questions of good governance and anti-corruption which sometimes overlaps with human rights issues where we are working from Interpol to UNODC to many others together but always restricted to what we are responsible for and where we have an authority and not trying to be a world government. We are not superior to the UN Security Council and we have to acknowledge but in this framework there we did many changes in the last couple of years and we are in a constant dialogue how to ever improve there in this direction. Thank you. Quickly because we are running a little bit short. To follow on from President Baxter by the way I have been on the UN Security Council and our performance was so low, so weak. When you say that we are not superior I am not sure about that. Don't put me in trouble now. It is really a fascinating subject because both the IOC and the UN in one way it is aspirational. It strives for an ideal in terms of the relationships between states and between human beings and you raise the fascinating point when the world doesn't reflect that ideal and we have a job to help it reflect that ideal to what extent can we lean and exert and persuade and you are absolutely right. You sense that there are limits and after all neither the IOC nor the UN is a sovereign body. It doesn't have sovereign powers. These are intergovernmental sort of organisms and it is how we can encourage through dialogue and through leaning that we get a better performance. But it does happen. I am looking here at my notes and told by this came from our moderator I shouldn't disclose that she is also... I have just thrown you under a bus. She didn't give me any notes. What about fair competition here? That's right. We should suspend the meeting now if I get into real trouble. But that through the MSC, through the Megasport platform, events platform, we have had concrete results ending the International Basketball Federation's ban on female Muslim basketball players from wearing a discrete hijab establishment of grievance mechanisms for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. And so things are possible. And I think it's the need for us to strive to maintain the ideals, the rights, the human rights of all peoples, the universality of it is why our work is so fascinating and why it will always be on go. And just on the idea that we can abandon law and we will... I don't think it will come any time soon. Thank you very much. And I do take the point as well on the limitations and I think that in the discussions also with companies, if I go just take the head on of the work for business and human rights that what the guiding principles of human rights offers is in fact some boundaries as well. I mean, it's a broad space in terms of responsibility but it's not an indefinite space. And I think that that's why many sports organizations as well have expressed an interest in engaging using that as a framework to define and set boundaries so it's not sort of endless. I'm conscious of time, I'm conscious that we started late with the little drama we had down in Room 26 but I do want to leave a little bit of time for questions. So if anyone of the participants have comments or questions to either of our participants, yes, Milun. Thanks very much, Lin. And good afternoon, everyone. My name is Milun Kotari. I'm a human rights scholar activist and special rapporteur on adequate housing. I was just thinking while listening to the High Commissioner and President Bach that in a sense both the UDHR and the Olympic Charter are lofty ideals that we're all striving to meet. And in my experience working on different Olympics I want to point out one egregious human rights violation that continues to happen which is forced evictions. It's a displacement of people from their homes and lands because of the building of stadiums infrastructure. We've had a long legacy of thousands of people being displaced in Seoul, in Beijing, in Rio recently of the favelas of poor communities in Sochi, in the Winter Olympics. We have information that even in 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo homeless people around the main stadium have been displaced. There's a public housing unit which housed elderly people have been displaced. And I wanted to ask President Bach whether this is an issue, obviously there are global standards, UN evictions guidelines and so on which need to be part of respect for the bidding criteria but when these kinds of violations happen is there, what is the role of the IOC? Is there some, I mean the Global Evictions Guidelines for example call for an eviction impact assessment that has to be done before the events is that something you are considering because if we think of the legacy that these games leave behind there is often a very very negative legacy and there's tremendous amount of literature on that. So I just wanted to, not to put you on the spot but just to say that I hope this is an issue of concern to the IOC. Thank you. Thank you for this question. In fact I do not want to enter now into details that we could argue and also continue maybe bilaterally but what happened for instance in Rio and what kind of new housing there was offered to the communities and that there in fact many in the country were very happy with the new offers. What we are doing there to have certain standards respected is there first of all when it comes to our evaluation of the candidates then of course there already questions are asked whether the projects need any kind of expropriation. So this is the first part. If this is the case then we are insisting that the laws applicable there in the country that they are fully respected and this leads to even positive results we had was referring in Rio where it worked very well for a great number of people. It worked there also in Sochi where there was a whole new community being built and our chair of the coordination commission at the time he was considered by this community to be a kind of patron for them because during every visit they are upcoming to the games he was asking about the progress he was visiting the site he was receiving people having a dialogue with them so in order to make applicable standards are being met. I will take a couple of questions so I have the delegation of Japan and then Tim from ITUC any one else would like to have the floor and then Gigi so the delegation of Japan. Thank you very much and I really appreciate that what you have said it's really thought-provoking and very fascinating discussion on the human rights and sports and I'm really impressed by the very interesting discussion and as the host country of Tokyo 2020 games that we are pleased to say that we have also introduced Tokyo 2020 game sustainability plan and in that we prioritized the human rights and inclusiveness also Tokyo 2020 for the process of formulating our national action plan on business and human rights and one thing I like to ask is that you didn't mention the Paralympics games that Japan is also a host of Paralympics game 2020 and if you have any comments on the Paralympics games I would really like to hear. Thank you. Thank you. I should mention I was in Japan had the great pleasure of being in Japan for Tokyo 2020 and all the different issues that we are discussing that arose rising out of these to the preparation for the games. Tim. Should I answer? This is for this you need intelligent people to remember. Thank you. My question is I think the motivation of the International Trade Union in this area is very clear. It's our support and defence of the rights of workers and indeed human rights more generally. We're living in an increasingly fragmented and fractured world and we've heard particularly from President Bach some references to the kind of convening potential of sport across what might otherwise be political even conflictual fault lines and at the same time much to our pleasure of our organisation we now see the institution of human rights as a central element in sports governance, the delivery of events and so on coming into shape. My question for both High Commissioner and for President Bach is do those two things collide the human rights commitments and the kind of convening potential in what is an increasingly fragmented and fractured world? I prefer to answer now. We've got three more speakers on the list. Would you prefer to respond to these last two speakers now or I mean it's up to you? What do you think? I'm just a little bit conscious. Shall we take these two questions? And then we'll take the next three. Okay. It's an excellent question Tim. The President made clear that athletes have to in one way be kept separate from the ephemeral changes in the relationships between governments and states, the feuding, the sulking, the diatribe or otherwise and that it's not the athletes that are often who are creating these senses of crises and you can see that the need to separate that. In terms of the issues that were raised earlier, the matters of forced evictions, labor rights supply chain sort of contamination in terms of violations of the sourcing of materials or whatever it may be in the construction of facilities, the maintenance and support of the facilities. That is all I think that can be resolved because like any good governance, whether it's a company, a firm, an NGO and High Commissioner's Office good governance is actually quite hard but it's not impossible to achieve and so it should be where these problems exist they need to be focused on and they need to be sort of eased out of the system and as the President was saying in every endeavor we will see those who may try and cut corners or cheat or whatever it may be and we have to be vigilant enough to make sure that it's not at the expense of others and it has no space in any part of human experience at least of all in sporting experiences which aim to combine and to reinforce the human spirit. You're absolutely right first of all that our world is more fragmented than at least I can remember even more fragmented than in the Cold War. There are a couple of conversations with the High Commissioner and just also before this meeting it is the values we are standing for they are exactly the contrary to what we see in many areas of today's world the value of solidarity for instance it's not really the trend of the time to say it politely respect is not the trend of the time it's not the zeitgeist at this moment so yes there for us the challenges in this fragmented world are becoming bigger with a few to really get this power of sport to unify people to come to fruit at the same time we have to realize that when doing this there are the challenges your mentioning there are the threats to our values coming from the other side so the solution must be to address these challenges without jeopardizing the overall mission of bringing people together that means if you want to have it more concrete that means not to make athletes responsible for the mistakes or the fraud or the impasslement or the corruption of others so to address all these challenges where they happen but to try to keep this unifying power of sport alive because it is so threatened in our world and I think we all agree that we may need these sometimes last resort there in this fragmented world maybe more than in the past decades the Paralympics you know that for every candidate to host the Olympic Games it is obligatory also to organize the Paralympic Games otherwise it could not happen so we tell every candidate if you want to organize the Games you must also organize the Paralympic Games then the sporting site of the organization is in the hands of the International Paralympic Committee which is autonomous from the IOC but nevertheless we have one budget there is only one Olympic budget and this includes both the Olympic Games and the Paralympics but it is funded only by the IOC so the IOC will contribute to the budget of Tokyo 2020 with a value of about 1.6 billion US dollars to finance the organization of the Olympic Games and to finance the organization of the Paralympic Games furthermore just a couple of weeks ago on the occasion of the Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi in Pyongchang I have signed an agreement with the president of the International Paralympic Committee until the year 2032 which ensures the Paralympic Committee these conditions and offers the International Paralympic Committee even further support for their administration in their marketing with regard to TV rights and TV production and so on so to have the bond even closer on the other hand the International Paralympic Committee there had to to commit to the reforms we undertook in the IOC recently our Olympic agenda to make the games more sustainable and more feasible so they then can in turn not put more requests on an organizing committee after the host city contract has been signed so there they have to follow the IOC policy and everything what might have to be changed after signing the host city contract can only happen in an agreement by all parties can I ask a naive question can I say we are really running short of time and we have three speakers of us for the floor so if your naive question can be very brief with the permission of just extremely naive is it impossible to conceive of one games present park you have both sets of games combined into one so you will have different venues where in one venue you have persons with disabilities who are participating in another venue where it's not the case or is it just the costs of it are just so prohibitive it would be impossible to conceive of it or is it possible to imagine it one day it is first of all not something that the international Paralympic Committee wants okay for different reasons because you know there the attention of the public is not unlimited so if in these 17 days you overproduce then this will be a big challenge for the Paralympics athletes but on the other hand it would also not be possible cost wise we are already now at the limits of what there we can have in the Olympic games with regard to the number of athletes take the Olympic Village if you have to add to the 11,000 athletes and for the 1,000 officials we have in the Olympic Village if you would have to add another 7, 8,000 and then there I'm not even speaking of the sports facilities so it would be a huge challenge and would be somehow contradictory to our overall reforms to make the games more sustainable and more feasible okay I have Gigi, so if you can just introduce yourself and then the delegate from Brazil and from Uganda and then we'll close with some final reflections okay thank you very much so Lene asked for personal reflection and suggestions I will try to do this very quickly I'm Gigi Alfred and I coordinate the Sport and Rights Alliance and I'm also the head of sport and human rights at the World Players Association I really hope that this event does help raise awareness for the 70th anniversary for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and I can say that at the World Players Association we're also no strangers to trying to leverage the attention that sport brings to advancing good causes at last week's World Union World Congress we showed the video produced by FIFPRO of the major soccer players, sorry football players speaking to the value that the player unions have brought to them and of course this is something we hope that children that schools everywhere will show to demonstrate to children that their sports heroes have also benefited from the value of collective bargaining collective action for us I really wanted to thank the High Commissioner for mentioning youth and for reminding us that sport is no different when it comes to upholding standards of protections for affected groups and similar to my colleague here on adequate housing my suggestion really is speaking to the child athletes that we're hearing more and more are suffering from some of those sides of sport that have stepped over into excesses some at the level of strain some at the level of abuse and there are a number of standards including the convention on the rights of the child that really speak to upholding protections for these children safeguarding them but also ensuring their well-being there is I think in this case athletes that are looking to the world of sport for the excellence that we've spoken about in this session today and they've seen a very different side and this is the time in a world I think that we've noted is suffering from a lot of chaos and confusion for sport to step into this vacuum of leadership and also just a reminder that sport must try harder at this time to maintain its social license of the number of crumbling institutions around so we must do more and I think the discussion today will definitely help carry us forward so my suggestion definitely is to examine those standards to integrate them at a fundamental level so that we can maintain the power of sport that we've spoken to. Thank you very much Tiji. I give the floor to the delegation of Brazil. We felt even our mission here we felt as if we were being attacked and to be very frank it appeared at some points that there was a concerted media campaign to raise issues find faults and criticize. I'm not saying that we're above criticism on the contrary but we always see and that's how we approach the issue that sport has a positive opportunity to promote human rights and what I fear is that in this scenario of excessive scrutiny perhaps and over criticism this might discourage other countries from hosting mega sporting events especially developing countries which already have major challenges on their own and this is what I would like to hear from you both the perspective looking ahead how can we avoid this overt criticism and try to promote sports and human rights engaging civil society together with states which may host mega sporting events. Thank you. Thank you. I give the floor to the delegation of Uganda. Thank you moderator and I would like to express my appreciation for the presentation made by the two distinguished speakers His Excellency the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the President of the Olympic Committee I have a brief question on the question or the issue of universality I found it very interesting that when we are talking about universal human rights we are talking about universal sports and both of them have got rules some of them of course are some rules are higher than the other they become probably even laws or regulations now how can we use the principle of universality of one in order to make us operationalize the other here what I mean is for example if it takes in sports we have been talking about say Paralympics for example the rules require a certain type of people to participate in that kind of sport now you do not have to force or coerce somebody who does not qualify to participate in Paralympics now in human rights there are certain norms and practices the rules say this kind of category they practice this kind of behavior then another category they practice but what I see in the universality of the human rights is that everybody is to practice certain norms or certain rules which even their condition may not allow them to fit within those categories so how can we use universality of sports to make us operationalize universality of human rights more profitably and more understandably thank you could I invite you to give some brief reflections on the questions and then also some final reflections that you may want to convey thank you very much therefore bringing up the point of safeguarding athletes from harassment and abuse this is in fact a very critical topic on which the IOC is working already for a number of years we have established guidelines in this respect and last year we had a working group chaired by Prince Faisal Jordan I think toolkits for any national Olympic committee federation clubs, coaches there to address this issue there is in fact a lot to do but not only in sports we really have to look at this also in a broader context because you know these young kids do not only these childs do not only have sport as their environment there are many influential factors and there I think sport has to team up with others with schools in sometimes even kindergartens I don't want to become too personal or too detailed but when I was president of the national Olympic committee we were facing such a problem all over Germany in churches, in schools but what I still really makes me emotional today is that the worst and the most cases there are happening in families and to imagine this is something which really makes me furious makes me losing my belief in humankind but we cannot ignore this and sport alone cannot solve this issue so there we have to work together to have this atmosphere around these childs that if something is happening in sport that this child is daring to speak with the parents or is daring to speak with the teacher or is having the opportunity to address the issue to speak up so that then we can take all the necessary measures because in this area it's all about prevention there every case is one too much and can destroy a whole human life forever this is why prevention, prevention, prevention and there in cooperation when it comes to collective bargaining you know that there I think we have different areas of responsibilities this is clearly a human right for workers and in this in this respect for athletes who are employed by their professional clubs or leagues but there is a very different situation with regard to let's say in this case the Olympic athletes to make it easier there is an overlapping but for whom sport is more about social activity who have their own employment outside sport or are supported by their governments and so on and so on so there is where to see the different the different categories and we cannot speak about the athletes as as such you're 100% right with the examples you're giving there with 5th pro and football players but it's already if you take the other side it's already different let's say in tennis where the athletes are more entrepreneurs or then let's say a wrestler or to make it even more easier a fencer where the situation is very much different and has to be addressed differently with regard to Brazil thank you for the question if I would know a recipe how to avoid over criticism to hosts of olympic games or the IOC I would be very happy but I'm afraid that it needs some more reflection and if you have an idea please my telephone line is always open to the delegation of Uganda you're touching a very important point that means the equality of chances which we have realized with regard to the participation in the olympic games but which we have not fully realized with regard to the athletes their training and their opportunities to prepare themselves we're addressing this in two different ways with regard to the participation if a national olympic committee does not have an athlete being qualified on the sports field on the field of play does not meet the olympic standards which we have to establish in order to limit the number of athletes then we are inviting six athletes from this national olympic committee to participate nevertheless so that every national olympic committee can and has the obligation to participate in the olympic games with regard to making to improve the conditions for these athletes in their countries we have a program which is called olympic solidarity with which we spend in four years the period of the olympic games about half a billion US dollars to support their athletes and the national olympic committees in particular in those countries who are in sporting terms are developing there are for instance scholarships for athletes which allow them either to train better at home or to move to a continental training center or to go to a university abroad where they have better conditions nevertheless to represent their national olympic committee then afterwards these are programs for better coaches these are programs for better administrators and so on and there I can tell you that I just had the president of the national olympic committee of Uganda in Lausanne in our headquarters last week that your national olympic committee knows very well to access these these programs and is doing a great job there for the athletes but also on the area of conclusion where they are together with UNHCR are providing sports programs in refugee camp in Uganda and they're also giving testimony to the social responsibility of sport in this respect Thank you very much some final reflections from the High Commissioner No, very quickly on the issue of in particular children and what they go through having been the parent of two competitive fencers who competed all over the world essentially training five days a week and then competing over the weekends it is true that to succeed and this is the sort of sad part of it that if pushed by coaches and you train harder it will show in results and you're absolutely right from my own experience where we often see almost real abuse it's often from the families it comes from within a family they want to see the child either succeed in the sport of choice or in academic life and what they're prepared to do to the child is really anyone's guess because my impression is that it shows results and then you abide by it but the long term consequences on that human being is something which is best borne out by the athlete themselves and one remembers Andre Agassi when he published his memoirs claiming basically he said that his father refused to send him to school and kept him on the tennis court for seven hours a day and it produced a magnificent athlete but someone who had many years of difficulties coping with what they were deprived of and I think I'm glad to say that the IOC is taking interest I mean this is the responsibility of clubs and many many parts of the world and federations to understand what is happening but I've seen it myself often the coaches understand the limits but will push the athlete hard especially if they're talented but it's the families that make unreasonable expectations somehow and you can see these problems now on Brazil's point about excessive scrutiny good governance is hard everything that you strive to do that is really of a top performance is hard for oneself to a high standard and having outside scrutiny even if it's bruising and at times it can offset what the overall attempt is is nevertheless in the best interest of the state concerned and ultimately many of these problems do have a solution it just requires added attention and on Uganda I think you answered the question very well so thank you thank you very much we started half an hour late and we ended half an hour late so I guess we're sort of more or less even I do apologize for those who had made other plans but I would like to invite you to join me in giving our two distinguished speakers an applause and say thank you very much thank you thank you