ABSTRACT
Mega-sporting events (MSE) are increasingly demonstrating the capacity to leave a human rights and anti-corruption legacy: a series of human rights and anti-corruption norms, standards, practices and laws, which have application beyond the event, are likely to remain in place after the event is over, the adoption of which is accelerated by hosting an MSE. If we were to measure the difference between where a country began in relation to these issues and where the nation was on the eve of the event – or, put another way, the extent to which a country leveraged the MSE to effectuate enduring national reforms – we would find success in an unexpected place. Although Qatar has notoriously failed to effectively address many human rights issues, it has reformed its national labour rights framework to an uncommon and underappreciated degree. The subsequent FIFA World Cup hosts in 2026 – Canada, Mexico and the United States – have promised to leave both human rights and anti-corruption legacies. For MSE governance and global human rights and anti-corruption movements generally, we should acknowledge and support these developments. Failure to do so raises the spectre of what the literary theorist Edward Said once called ‘orientalism’.
