A FIFA task force on Monday arrived in Morocco to inspect a World Cup bid that obscures one potential impediment to hosting the 2026 soccer showpiece: Homosexuality is a criminal offense in the north African country.
An Associated Press review of 483 pages of documents submitted to FIFA found that Morocco failed to declare its anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) law as a risk factor and provide a remedy, appearing to flout stringent new bidding requirements.
“Morocco’s human rights report presented to the FIFA is an intentional silence on an issue that Morocco knows too well is a crime on its soil,” Moroccan Association for Human Rights president Ahmed El Haij said.
“It is evident that if Morocco was to host the World Cup, LGBT people coming to watch the games will face a lot of discrimination. The state will not be able to protect them, nor will it be able to commit in preventing measures that could be taken against them by both the state and society,” he added.
Under Article 489 of the Moroccan penal code, sexual acts between people of the same sex are punishable by six months to three years in prison.
While World Cup hosts could previously largely shake off concerns from activists, FIFA has demonstrated a growing awareness of how rights abuses can afffect its events.
World Cups must be in places free of “discrimination based on sexual orientation,” FIFA secretary-general Fatma Samoura wrote to activists last year discussing the forthcoming tournament in Russia.
Samoura’s letter reflected a policy incorporated into world soccer statutes in 2013 as scrutiny of human rights mounted in Russia and 2022 World Cup host Qatar.
“Under the new nondiscrimination requirements under FIFA’s statutes and under the Human Rights Policy, one of the red lines is anti-gay activity, laws or policies,” Human Rights Watch director of global initiatives Minky Worden said.
“Morocco, if they’re serious about winning, would need to be prepared to repeal the article of the penal code which punishes people for being gay,” she added.
Unlike when Russia and Qatar emerged victorious in the bidding contest eight years ago, prospective hosts for the 2026 tournament were mandated to commission independent human rights reports and provide frank risk assessments that form part of the task force’s evaluation.
While the US-Canada-Mexico bid chose to publish its human rights documents, Morocco repeatedly refused requests to match the disclosure.
The Morocco bid’s international communications team also declined to provide any LGBT policy or how the criminalization of same-sex relations would be addressed.
There is a solitary passing reference to LGBT rights in Morocco’s main 381-page bid book: A narrowly worded pledge by the nation’s soccer federation to “work to combat all forms of discrimination,” including “sexual orientation.”
There is no mention of homosexuality being a criminal offense in the bid book, nor in the executive summary.
It is also omitted from the 33-page human rights strategy in which bids were told by FIFA to own up to “adverse impacts” and provide mechanisms to address them.
“It trips you up in a bid like this, because then you are submitting documents that don’t accurately reflect the human rights situation in your own country,” Worden said. “And you have missed an opportunity to engage the stakeholders who will come back to criticize you if you don’t uphold international human rights.”
Morocco’s only acknowledgment that homosexuality is outlawed comes within one sentence in a 42-page “study on the human rights situation.”
Even then, the reference is ambiguous and implies that the law might no longer be in place.
However, one of the members of the bid’s human rights board said that Morocco is a “friendly and tolerant” country.
“I don’t think that [a ban on homosexuality] will be an issue because organizing a World Cup is mainly about infrastructure, being passionate about football and the ability to organize a safe World Cup,” said Jamal El Amrani, who represents the Junior Chamber International organization in Morocco.
“We have our laws and we have our values and maybe FIFA also have their values... We may have some differences, but we just need to have the ability to respect the differences and to be tolerant,” he added.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with