Physical and sexual abuse against young athletes in sport in light of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)

Abstract

Numerous young athletes have suffered from physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their coaches. Despite this, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has never dealt with a violation of child rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the case of physical and sexual abuse in sport. In this situation, a question that may arise is how young athletes can argue a violation of their substantive rights under the Convention before the ECtHR in the case of such abuses? In this regard, the right to physical and mental integrity under Articles 10 (2) and 27 (2) of the Swiss Federal Constitution (SFC) as well as the prohibition of an excessive limitation of personal freedom under Article 27 (2) of the Swiss Civil Code (SCC) may play an essential role to build a bridge between the Convention rights and the fundamental human rights under national law in light of the SFT’s precedents within the meaning of substantive public policy under Article 190 (2) (e) of the Swiss Private International Law Act (PILA). Although the International Federations (IFs) have not recognised a legal standing of young athletes suffering from physical and sexual abuse, state parties to the ECHR must implement positive obligations under Article 8 (1) of the ECHR to take necessary measures to protect young athletes against such abuses by non-state actors and may require sports governing bodies within the jurisdiction to comply with Article 8 (1)’s obligations. Accordingly, this article might serve to clarify a duty of sports governing bodies to protect young athletes against such abuses through a lens of the ECHR.

The effective application of international human rights law standards to the sporting domain: Should UN monitoring bodies take central stage?

“…Footnote 17 (Continued) Indeed, UN human rights protection bodies' intervention in sports matters so far has been, to say the least, cautious. Academic studies have made visible human rights violations in the sporting domain (Donnelly 2008 andMorel 2012), have advocated for embedding human rights law in the sporting system (Schwab 2017), have paid attention to the question of the eventual role the ECtHR could play in this regard (Shinohara 2021), have underlined the importance of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights 21 (Schwab 2018 andWang 2020), and have proposed the creation of specialized human rights protection bodies (Anderson and Partington 2018;West 2019;Patel 2021). However, despite emphasizing the importance of IHRL, none has systematically analysed the chances for the UN system's human rights monitoring mechanisms to have a hand in the playing field.…”