Exploring the Nexus between Events and Human Rights: Building Agendas for Research, Theory, and Practice
Excerpt
As events have proliferated, so have concerns about their impacts, utility, and consequent value. From a utilitarian standpoint, there has been more-than-a-little concern that event costs exceed event benefits, especially when both are rigorously identified (Salgado Barandela, Barajas, & Sanchez-Fernandez, 2023; Taks et al., 2011), and that even if economically positive in aggregate, they operate as income transfers from the many who subsize them to the few who can benefit (Mules, 1998; Ziakas, 2015). From the standpoint of social ethics, there have been concerns over human rights abuses associated with events (Horne, 2018; Louw, 2012). Although popular media may attribute the fact of abuse to particular types of governments or events, evidence suggests that abuses occur winter and summer, regardless of whether governments position themselves as liberal democracies or as authoritarian autocracies. Illustrating that point, Boykoff (2016) documents the following examples from 21st century Olympic Games: During preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, 1.3 million people were displaced, and criticisms of the Games were suppressed, including arrests of dissidents who sought to protest. For the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, anti-Olympic displays were outlawed even if on private property; some First Nations lands were appropriated; protest groups were infiltrated and harassed; homelessness was criminalized; and potentially critical American journalists were detained at the border. Before and during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, police cracked down on social (especially anti-Olympic) activists; public spaces were privatized for purposes of the Games; access to some lanes for driving was lost so that those lanes could be reserved for Olympic VIPs; and surface-to-air missiles were placed on some apartment building roofs. Much decried by Western media, multiple abuses for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi were documented, including worker exploitation; assassination of Games critics; imprisonment of anti-Olympic activists; police search and seizure at NGO offices; bans of freedom of assembly; criminalization of gay, lesbian, or trans-gender status; and hacking the websites of protest groups.
As these examples illustrate, it is not merely naïve to attribute human rights concerns regarding events to particular government or event types; it is downright inaccurate to do so. The two emergent questions, then, are: (1) Why do human rights abuses become manifest at some events? (2) What might be done about to prevent or overcome such abuses? Events are not independent variables that can be understood merely as a general category. Social, political, and economic choices are made for them. Processes and rationales for those choices, as well as the outcomes of those choices need to be understood.
For the full article, click ‘Download PDF' below.
Reference
Chalip, L., and Duignan, M.B. (2023). Exploring the Nexus between Events and Human Rights: Building Agendas for Research, Theory, and Practice. Event Management, awaiting DOI.
Resources