Rasool Mogooei
PhD Student in International Relations, University of Isfahan
Russia, including its predecessor the Soviet Union, has long been a contentious figure in the Olympic Games, the world’s most prominent sporting event. In 1980, amidst the Cold War, Western nations boycotted the Moscow Summer Olympics in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In a retaliatory move, several Eastern Bloc countries boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
In the early 21st century, Russia faced further scrutiny for widespread doping, resulting in nearly a thousand Russian athletes being sanctioned from the 2012 London Olympics through to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. The Russian Olympic Committee faced heavy penalties, reflecting a deepening crisis. The situation escalated further with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leading the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to impose stringent sanctions on athletes from Russia and Belarus. These included bans on hosting any Olympic or non-Olympic events, restrictions on governmental invitations to international competitions, and prohibitions against the use of national anthems and flags in international events, including the 2024 Paris Olympics. These measures echo the sanctions previously imposed on South Africa during the apartheid era. However, a perplexing question lingers in global discourse, particularly within Iran and beyond: why has Israel, despite decades of occupation, repression, severe human rights violations, and flagrant breaches of international humanitarian law, never faced similar sanctions?
Israel’s actions not only constitute gross violations of international conventions but also contravene the fundamental tenets of the Olympic Charter. This charter, which serves as the ethical backbone of the Olympic movement, emphasizes the importance of upholding universal ethical principles. These principles include respecting international human rights conventions, honoring human dignity, rejecting all forms of discrimination, and opposing any kind of harassment (IOC Charter, 2024). These ideals are directly rooted in international humanitarian law, which underscores the necessity of distinguishing between combatants and civilians during conflicts, ensuring the protection of their rights and dignity. Despite these clear violations, the international community, including the IOC, has not held Israel accountable. International law and the Olympic principles assert that at the very least, conflicts involving civilians and human rights violations should not coincide with sporting events. According to the Olympic Charter, member states are explicitly prohibited from initiating or engaging in military conflicts during the Olympic Games (Chappelet, 2021). Furthermore, in March 2018, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution aimed at promoting human rights through sports and the Olympic ideals, urging governments to implement effective measures to address and mitigate violence associated with sporting events (Nawab Daneshmand, 2021). However, the 2024 Paris Olympics witnessed a stark contradiction, as the conflict in Gaza persisted unabated.
Compounding the issue was the presence of Israeli athletes at the Paris Olympics who had been directly involved in military operations and human rights violations in Gaza, only to participate in the Games shortly thereafter. This was brought to light when a hacking group leaked information revealing that some of these athletes had been actively engaged in the conflict with Hamas and involved in the violence in Gaza just before their deployment to Paris. Under international law, this situation falls under the principle of individual responsibility. International law holds individuals accountable for war crimes, not only for committing such crimes but also for attempts, aiding, or abetting in their commission (IHL Databases, 2024). Therefore, these Israeli athletes could be personally liable for war crimes in Gaza, making their exclusion from the Olympics a legitimate action under this principle.
Additionally, the principle of the responsibility to protect (R2P), a relatively recent concept in international law grounded in the theoretical frameworks of “human security” and “humanitarian intervention,” aims to address severe human rights violations, crimes against humanity, including genocide, and ethnic cleansing by enabling humanitarian interventions (Goudarzi & Kafash Nayeri, 2019). While R2P primarily emphasizes the obligation of states and leaders to protect their populations, it also imposes a broader responsibility on the international community to hold states accountable for their actions and protect suffering civilians. Despite the IOC’s commitment to maintaining independence and autonomy as stipulated in the Olympic Charter (IOC Charter, 2023), the committee seemingly succumbed to pressures from major global powers, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the host nation, France, thereby allowing Israel’s participation in the Olympics to proceed unchallenged.
In light of the aforementioned issues, it is imperative that Israel be held accountable for its actions in Gaza. The global community bears a collective responsibility, both at the level of political leadership and civil society, to address the genocide in Gaza and the systematic starvation of its children. International humanitarian law is a universally recognized and respected set of norms, transcending cultural and normative differences (Abbasi, 2016). This universal principle was reflected in the global outcry, albeit unsuccessful, to pressure the IOC into excluding Israel from the Paris 2024 Olympics. Such a move would not only align with international humanitarian law but also resonate deeply with the universal values of humanity and dignity, striving to end this ongoing tragedy.
References
- Abbasi, M. (2016). The Islamic theory of humanitarian law and international peace with an emphasis on inherent dignity and human value. Islamic Political Studies, 4(10), 1-25.
- Chappelet, J.-L. (2021). The Olympics’ evolving relationship with human rights: An ongoing affair. Sport in Society, 24(8), 1287-1303. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2020.1865312
- Goudarzi, M., & Kafash Nayeri, M. (2019). Globalization of human rights: The culture of peace and international relations. Human Rights Biannual Journal, 14(1), 59-77.
- International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). (2024). Customary IHL: Rule 149. Individual responsibility. Retrieved from https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule149
- International Olympic Committee (IOC). (2024). Olympic Charter. Retrieved from https://olympics.com/ioc/olympic-charter
- Nawab Daneshmand, F. (2021). Promotion of human rights through sports and Olympic ideals. Presented at the Online Symposium of the Iranian Association for United Nations Studies, October 2021.
