How did the idea for the Dignity 2026 start and what is its main goal?
Our coalition started around 2017. At the time, it was a loose coalition of organizations like the AFL-CIO and other labor groups, Human Rights Watch, and Georgetown Law to talk about how to promote human rights and labor rights standards for 2026. Most of the organizations at the table had worked with Mary Harvey (Center for Sport and Human Rights) to help draft the human rights strategy for the United Bid.
We saw 2026 as an opportunity to flip the narrative, so that the World Cup could leave a positive legacy in cities rather than become synonymous with human rights abuses. It was an opportunity to leave the cities in a better place than when the tournament started, whether economically, culturally, or otherwise.
Back in 2017, we still had optimism that the United States might be able to demonstrate some level of leadership on human rights on the world stage. Obviously, that has changed very quickly over the course of the last few years, and especially over the last few months. But that was the original hope of the coalition, which we formalized as the Dignity 2026 Coalition a few years ago around 2022.
As the primary coordinator of the Dignity 2026 Coalition, you are in constant contact with various grassroots organizations in the US. What exactly does this cooperation with the various organizations and host cities look like?
To me, building a positive legacy in host cities means movement building and organizing in communities and agitating and galvanizing stakeholders around an unprecedented event like the World Cup. It is moment to unify stakeholders who may not have had a track record of working together across issue areas, for example immigration, housing, or labor groups, and so forth.
A positive legacy also means reforming local laws or policies, ensuring appropriate budget allocation to implement initiatives, and creating opportunities to build a community or public buy-in around an event. The World Cup is a long-term investment around an immediate event.
We also try to be very deferential to the fact that the host city stakeholders are the experts. Rather than approach our organizing from the top down, we take direction from the local stakeholders who work and live closest to the impacted communities and follow their lead on the strategic goals they want to prioritze. We are a resource for host city stakeholders and provide a feedback loop between them and FIFA, as well as facilitate connections with stakeholders in other host cities.
For example, we helped launch the Play Fair Coalition last year in Atlanta. In conversations with local funders and also a nonprofits that work on alternative first response in the city, we realized both the need and the opportunity for grassroots and civil society organizations in Atlanta to unite and form a coalition that brings a collective voice to ensuring that the needs and priorities of local residents and businesses are meaningfully considered when staging large events like the World Cup. Atlantans are quick to remind people of the 1996 Olympics, which serves as a cautionary tale because the city built a jail to detain thousands of unhoused individuals who were mostly Black men at the time, which then shaped the criminal justice policy of the city for decades. And so the goal was to avoid a repeat of the 1996 Olympics and to give the community a greater voice this time around.
When you have these big events come to town, it's not just about sports, but also about how you use the massive public investment to actually improve public infrastructure and increase benefits to the community, and making sure that any economic benefit is felt across the city and not just concentrated in the hands of a few.
From today's perspective, what are the concerns that organizations express?
The elephant in the room for most American or most US-based civil society organizations is immigration. This was not a topic that we had foreseen would cast such a large shadow over the tournament – not during the initial bid in 2018, or even through the years of consultation with FIFA on the development of the human rights framework. We had not anticipated that immigration was going to be such a flashpoint in this country, or the degree to which the World Cup would be politicized by FIFA through its close relationship with the current administration. As many others have pointed out, it’s unclear where FIFA ends and this presidential administration begins.
There are a lot of open questions about what federal law enforcement activity will look like this summer, not just in the stadiums, but across the host cities, because even if there are no federal civil immigration enforcement activities happening inside stadiums, enforcement activity may continue outside the stadiums and in our communities. Groups are highly wary about the impact that the Department of Homeland Security will have during the tournament. The risk is not just for travelers coming into the United States, but also for community members and workers. These residents and local community members did not choose for the World Cup to come to their cities, and are not paying thousands of dollars to attend the World Cup games, but nevertheless the World Cup is happening to them. Most of the immigration enforcement activity has been happening at work sites or to people have been detained while going to and from work. This has created a chilling effect across the country for people who don't want to leave their homes.
There are other concerns as well. It seems to be a universal trend across all mega sporting events, for example, that we treat people who are unhoused and unsheltered as people that can be swept off the street, and even in some places arresting them and detaining them for the mere fact that they live in encampments or live outdoors. In the United States, we now have a Supreme Court decision from 2024 that allows local governments to functionally criminalize homelessness by banning sleeping outdoors or camping. So, for obvious reasons, that’s a huge concern.
We also want to ensure there are good and decent jobs for workers. We're going to need a significant number of short-term and temporary workers, who, in the United States, happen to be primarily immigrants and low-wage workers.
We are also concerned about are free speech and protest, which has been stifled across the board in the United States, whether you're at a civil society organization or just a protester on the street.
What do you think is special about the 2026 tournament and the host cities’ commitment to human rights (and sustainability)?
We are still waiting for the majority of the host committees to submit their Human Rights Action Plan. As of April 27, only 4 out of the 16 host cities have submitted a full plan that stakeholders can actually review before the Plans are expected to be publicly released on May 11, just one month before the first match.
Without a transparent process for developing and implementing a Human Rights Action Plan, we have lost the opportunity for local stakeholders to react to and help implement the plans, and for the local government or the host committee to have adequate runway to meaningfully operationalize those commitments, which are not legally binding unless it’s embedded in local policies and budget processes . A plan is just a plan; it's not self-executing.
So the best we can hope is that, after the conclusion of the World Cup, that there's still an interest by host city governments and an opportunity to implement some of the commitments that were promised before the games. Each city’s Human Rights Action Plan will almost certainly contain provisions that help improve living conditions, the built environment, and economic opportunity for host city residents. And the need for those improvements does not go away when the World Cup ends.
On the flip side, what is challenging about 2026 in particular is that, for the first time, FIFA has really decentralized the governance of the biggest World Cup tournament ever across 16 different host cities and government entities. And so you have many decision makers in this space: the FIFA 2026 team, FIFA Zurich, 16 different host committees, and 16 different host city governments. Added to that, the White House that is playing a very prominent role in some of these high-level discussions, especially around safety and security. And so there are a lot of chefs in the kitchen, and they like to punt to each other and place different responsibilities on other parties. Under this decentralized structure, accountability becomes even more difficult when it's unclear to stakeholders which entities are tasked with which decision-making.
One of the positive things for the United States is, as of now, the fact that we still have a very vibrant and motivated civil society infrastructure. We have people who are boots on the ground, who understand what it is to experience a mega event in their cities, who have the staffing capacity and the relationships with stakeholders and with city officials to be resources in implementation. Unlike some of the locations in recent World Cups, we are saturated in the U.S. with very excellent civil society groups.
What do you expect from FIFA for this tournament?
For better or worse, FIFA will continue to do what it has always said it will do: focus on operations and activities that occur inside the stadiums. Everything else is on the cities, host committee, and local stakeholders.That said, one would hope that FIFA will use its considerable resources to to advocate for the best interests of the residents and the host cities. FIFA cannot continue to bury its head in the sand and pretend that it does not have a direct role in shaping post-tournament legacies in the cities. FIFA will pick up and leave after six weeks; the cities will continue to feel the impact of the tournament for decades to come.
The Austrian national team has qualified and many people wonder about the safety for fans. Do you have any recommendations for fans (travel registration, registration offices, contacts etc)?
I would point them to the numerous resources developed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil society partners in the United States. Many of the recommendations include common sense measures like turning off your phone when entering the United States, removing sensitive information from your phones, bringing copies of your passport and other documents and identification, and consulting Know Your Rights and other resources to understand the rights of all individuals in the United States, regardless of immigration status. Some of those rights may change depending on where you are in the United States.
Austrians and foreign visitors should also be in touch with their local embassy or consular offices, and know who to call in case of an emergency.
In mid-May, Dignity 2026 will also be launching a fan and community resource website called frontlinefc.org, which we are launching with partners at Independent Supporters Council North America and the Centre for Sport & Human Rights. The website will include much of this information, as practical advice and information about navigating each of the host cities
Do you see any effects that the war in Iran might have on the World Cup?
Whether it’s the war in Iran or recent incidents in Guadalajara, the World Cup is not insulated from geopolitics. The point we have tried to reinforce with FIFA repeatedly is that the tournament is not happening in a contained environment free from conflict or external stressors. When FIFA drops into these dense urban centers and regions, even for a fleeting few weeks, it will inevitably exacerbate conditions on the ground, which in turn could complicate and even hamper tournament operations as well. FIFA really needs to be prepared for that, as well as recognize the fact that it has lost any ability to claim that they are not a government entity and therefore does not engage in politics. The headlines over the past year alone sharply contradicts that.
