Fifa’s newly introduced human rights strategy for World Cups is set to be tested on Sunday when the host city for the 2026 final is announced. The location of the final – the tournament is to be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada – is understood to be between two venues: AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, or MetLife Stadium in New Jersey’s Meadowlands.
While the latter stadium is unlikely to draw much comment, a World Cup final in Texas may attract its share of criticism, particularly because the 2026 World Cup is the first time a human rights strategy was included as part of the bidding process.
The 2022 host, Qatar, came under fire for, among other things, its harsh policies on LGBTQ+ rights. But the same could be said for Texas. The push for the state to host a World Cup final comes as it is under a human rights spotlight with recently introduced laws challenged in courts for adversely affecting women’s health, LGBTQ+ rights, and immigration. Texas has some of the tightest restrictions on abortion in the US including attempts to ban women from leaving the state to seek an abortion and doctors and medical staff facing criminal charges and lifetime prison terms for providing abortion-related services to women.
Human rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and GLAAD, have written to the United Nations accusing Texas of violating human rights with punitive laws described as “a systemic attack on the fundamental rights, dignities, and identities of LGBTQIA+ persons”. Texas has also faced criticism and legal challenges for its approach to immigration with new laws that Human Rights Watch claims will “harm migrants, asylum seekers, and communities in Texas.”
“It has been a total witch-hunt. It takes its toll,” a parent of a trans child in Texas told the Guardian last year. She said the anti-trans climate in the state had become so bad that the family was leaving for New Zealand.
The fact that the US can’t take the moral high ground in every situation is acknowledged by former USWNT goalkeeper and Fifa executive Mary Harvey, who led the 2026 North American bid team’s human rights strategy: “Every single country has human rights challenges.”
Harvey says that if countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which will host the tournament in 2034, come under scrutiny then it is only fair the US does too.
“Implementing World Cup hosting standards for human rights is a new benchmark, prompting questions about consistency and commitment. Observers are watching closely to see if the criteria applied to the 2026 hosts will also hold for future events, wary of a potential double standard,” says Harvey. “Particularly, nations with a significant gap between local practices and international norms view this as a critical test.
“The focus on labor and LGBT rights in other contexts raises concerns about selective attention and hypocrisy, contrasting with issues like transgender rights in places like Texas. This discrepancy poses a fundamental question: if these standards are not uniformly upheld, especially in countries with less scrutiny, can we genuinely advocate for them globally?”
Nations bidding for 2026 were required by Fifa to identify human rights risks within their own countries and explain how those risks would be mitigated. The combined US, Mexico, and Canada bid was selected in 2018 from a vote of 203 Fifa members. The North American bid received 134 votes to Morocco’s 65 votes.
“Some [countries] have higher risks or more prevalent risks than others.” Harvey says. “But even within the same country, there are different perceptions and different realities [about human rights]. For example, I am white and from a certain socioeconomic background, have had opportunities as a result, and life for me one might think is pretty good. You cannot extrapolate that into what the risks are for an event like the World Cup. That could lead to ‘well, things are fine here’ kind of rhetoric. It’s also not the point, not how human rights risks are assessed, nor what the Fifa human rights requirements ask you to do.”
The highly credentialed Harvey was a goalkeeper with the USWNT between 1989 and 1996 and served as a Fifa executive between 2003 and 2008. She says “sunlight” and accountability is the key to maintaining the integrity of Fifa’s human rights strategy for future World Cups.
“The difference [between Russia and Qatar and 2026] is the transparency,” Harvey says. “Sunlight is a good antiseptic. If there is sunlight on human rights strategies and stakeholder engagement is required, those stakeholders are invested in these commitments being realized. If you are engaging someone on LGBTQ+, disability rights, or migrant worker rights or supply chain risks, and they have input into the risk assessment and strategy and they see things they will say ‘Hey, that’s not what we agreed to or promised.
“Because [2026 bid documents are] available publicly there are various forms of accountability: Fifa, other stakeholders, civil society, and investigative journalism. They can say these were promises and commitments that were made. What’s happening with those? It’s important that these documents were public and published as part of the bid. Fifa, to its credit, made all of those documents public. And those documents should continue to be public – regardless of who is bidding or hosting.”
Harvey adds, “We’re now entering a phase for the IOC and Fifa and Uefa where their biggest events are being awarded with clearly articulated human rights responsibilities. That was not the case in Russia and not the case in Qatar. There is an expectation of responsibility to address risks that are identified in the bidding process and on an ongoing basis through due diligence. It is a lot of process but it is all new.”
Many will question how this newfound commitment to “human rights responsibilities” tallies with Fifa’s decision to award the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia, a country with a long list of violations. Nevertheless, World Cup bidding nations are required to submit “bid books” to Fifa – manuals describing how every element of hosting a major event will be addressed. The successful US, Mexico, and Canada bid book – totalling over 500 pages – was optimistically tagged “Unity, Certainty, and Opportunity”. Further branded as “United 2026”, the bid’s uplifting pitch was “using sport to transform lives and communities”. Harvey joined the United 2026 bid in 2017 as an independent contractor leading stakeholder engagement and drafting bid documents related to human rights and labor rights.
The United 2026 bid identified the United States – which will host the majority of matches for 2026 – as having the most gaps of the co-hosts in meeting human rights obligations, specifically in freedom of movement and travel, non-discrimination, labor rights, privacy, and housing.
“When it came to the risk assessment for North America it looked at gaps in laws, and gaps in laws at the municipal level, the state level, and the national level,” says Harvey. “For example, the city of Atlanta has laws, the state of Georgia has another set of laws, and then you have federal laws. Which one causes or mitigates risks to people?
“The Kafala system was legal in Qatar, but there is a big gap between that and international labor standards. So it might be legal to do something in a country, but the Fifa requirements ask for gaps between local laws and practice to be identified and then to propose ways to address gaps that are identified to prevent harm to people.”
Harvey, who was appointed chief executive of the Center for Sports and Human Rights in 2019 after working for the bid, says any assessment is a “snapshot in time” and itself risks being out of date as soon as it is published.
“The initial risk assessment [for 2026] was done in 2017,” she says. “Then another look was done in early 2020, and then Covid broke out and there were massive changes due to that. What’s important is that there are processes in place to address risks as they change over time.”
Harvey says the biggest human rights risk tied to sports governance is tied to athlete harassment and abuse – online, psychological, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, and ensuring how allegations are reported, investigated, and remedied. The 2026 World Cup takes place in a region plagued by reports of athlete abuse and failure by institutions – including teams, leagues, and federations – to adequately address individual allegations and the issue as a whole.
The National Women’s Soccer League was the focus of multiple inquiries into athlete abuse and widespread abuse of athletes across Canada triggered government investigations and a call from athletes – so far ignored by the Canadian government – for a national inquiry into systemic abuse. The crisis has also touched United 2026 leadership. In 2021, former players called for Concacaf president and a Fifa vice-president Victor Montagliani to be suspended from Fifa for his role in misrepresenting the reasons a national team coach left his role in 2008. The coach subsequently pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct and is now in jail. Peter Montopoli, Canada Soccer’s long time general-secretary at the time of the incidents, is currently employed by Fifa in a 2026 executive role. Montagliani holds a position elected by regional federations including the US, Canada, and Mexico, while Montopoli is a Fifa employee.
“There are a lot of factors that influence player safety,” Harvey says. ““Federations, US Soccer, Canada Soccer, the Mexican federation, the professional leagues are another. I don’t look at it as a confederation issue, per se. I look at it as who actually has policies that affect player safety and can file a grievance and there is access to remedy. Before it gets to Concacaf and before it gets to a national level it gets to a city, or a league, or a team. There are a lot of governance and policy layers that are closer to where the harm has reportedly occurred.”
Harvey says the 2026 World Cup will be a litmus test for how seriously Fifa and local organizers approach human rights and mega sporting events. Exactly how concerns and risks – including an increasing number of laws in Texas and Florida that target LGBTQ+ communities – are handled for 2026 will influence how expectations and reality are managed by future hosts. Six countries across three continents – Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina – will host the 2030 Fifa World Cup while Saudi Arabia will host in 2034. Another wildcard is how a possible Donald Trump presidency from 2025 may also see a change to some federal laws. The US – and Fifa – could be in for a challenging few years.
