Respecting the Right to Nationality in International Sport

This paper questions whether international sports – using the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the case study – fully respects the human right to a nationality. <br><br>International sports have taken a leading role in addressing discrimination, but have supported discrimination on the grounds of nationality. Athletes compete as part of a national team. This requires sporting associations such as the IOC to develop nationality rules. As some athletes discover, the Olympic Charter permits changing nationality, but places restrictions on the ability to compete for the new national team. So, the individual cannot compete for the prior team because nationality is lost, but cannot compete for the new team because the new nationality is not yet acknowledged.<br><br>In contrast to the IOC rules, international human rights law takes a different approach to nationality and the IOC rules are not in alignment with them. Every individual has a right to a nationality. This nationality is often the source of other rights, such as political participation, employment and education. For this reason, statelessness is largely prohibited. In addition, this right includes the right to change nationality. However, IOC limitations on recognizing changes do not respect this freedom and may work to discourage athletes from changing nationality, as is their right. The result is that athletes who do not satisfy nationality rules can be deemed de facto stateless. It is true that international law does contemplate some limitation on nationality changes, most notably as expressed in the Nottebohm case. However, the reasons for refusing to recognize nationality in Nottebohm are not present in interna-tional sports. And even if Nottebohm was relevant, it still requires an individualized assessment, based on pre-scribed and proportionate rules. For these reasons, IOC rules on change of nationality do not live up to the Committee’s own human rights aspirations.