Education and awareness-raising

Educational tools

Important steps in the prevention of harassment and abuse include the development, implementation and communication of athlete-safeguarding policies and procedures.

However, to truly maximise the effectiveness of such policies, which means to have a lasting and positive impact on athlete welfare, there are other barriers that should be considered and addressed.

These include, but are not limited to:

• Fear of reporting;

• Lack of understanding of what constitutes harassment and abuse;

• Assumptions that the responsibilities related to athlete safeguarding apply to someone else;

• Aspects of sports culture, which research suggests may facilitate harassment and abuse; and

• Mistrust of the reporting procedure.

All the above may be addressed through educational programmes and materials for all those involved in sport.

The IOC has developed several educational tools related to athlete safeguarding, which are free and accessible for all athletes and entourage members.

The IOC has produced two consensus statements related to the prevention of harassment and abuse in sport. The IOC Consensus Statements were developed in collaboration with subject matter experts and researchers.

The IOC has developed various educational videos and media tools to raise awareness about the prevention of harassment and abuse in sport which are available to share.

Please contact safeguardingofficer@olympic.org for further information.

Below is an animation that was used during the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires with the objective of raising awareness about the different forms of harassment and abuse. The video is fully animated to ensure that it is useful for multiple languages.