IOC and international partners establish taskforces to tackle corruption in sport
In striving to improve governance and integrity in sport, the International Partnership against Corruption in Sport (IPACS) – a multi-stakeholder platform composed of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other international sports organisations, governments and inter-governmental organisations – agreed to set up three new taskforces to address pressing issues.
These include:
• reducing the risk of corruption in procurement relating to sporting events and infrastructure;
• ensuring integrity in the selection of major sporting events, with an initial focus on managing conflicts of interest; and
• optimising the processes of compliance with good governance principles to mitigate the risk of corruption.
The move came during a meeting of the IPACS Working Group at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) headquarters in Paris from 14 to 15 December 2017. OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría stressed the urgent need to fight all risks of corruption in sport to preserve the integrity of sports organisations and their credibility. The gathering was coordinated by the IPACS core group – comprised of the IOC, the United Kingdom Government, the OECD, the Council of Europe and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
We need to go beyond declarations of goodwill and develop tools and practical solutions to help improve governance in sport and ensure integrity across all levels.
IOC Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer Pâquerette Girard Zappelli said after the meeting: “If you look at the recent major governance issues sports organisations have faced, the priority areas of our new taskforces are very much on point. We need to go beyond declarations of goodwill and develop tools and practical solutions to help improve governance in sport and ensure integrity across all levels. The power of IPACS is the capacity to act quickly at the highest levels of sports organisations, governments, inter-governmental bodies and certain expert organisations, which all have a stake in this.”
Each taskforce will develop checklists and pilot projects in their specific areas and report back to the IPACS Working Group during its next meeting, scheduled for June 2018 at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.
IPACS was launched at the IOC’s International Forum for Sports Integrity (IFSI) in February 2017. It is a multi-stakeholder platform with the mission “to bring together international sports organisations, governments, inter-governmental organisations, and other relevant stakeholders to strengthen and support efforts to eliminate corruption and promote a culture of good governance in and around sport”.
The initiative has received widespread approval, including from the 14th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers Responsible for Sport, the G20 governments and the Conference of States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption.