As the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup inches closer, 鈥檚 schedule keeps getting busier.
鈥淚f I鈥檓 not teaching, I鈥檓 on a call dealing with the World Cup,鈥� Ramasastry said.
Ramasastry, a professor of law at the 榴莲视频, is an expert in the convergence of business and human rights 鈥� a field she helped create. She was also an advisor to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the group that established standards to help governments regulate companies while also providing guidelines for聽 those companies to navigate global human rights issues.
Her expertise led to work with , which launched a stronger commitment to human rights after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. included its reliance on migrant workers to build stadiums, women鈥檚 rights and LGBTQ+ rights. As a large global sporting body bigger than most multinational corporations, FIFA accepted that, like those companies, it has corresponding human rights commitments.
In the wake of that tournament, Ramasastry was asked to join FIFA鈥檚 human rights subcommittee as its independent human rights advisor. The committee commissioned on Qatar, which found that many migrants were uncompensated for their work, and others died or suffered injuries.聽
As a result, the 2026 World Cup marks the first time each host bid had to include a human rights component, including the United Bid submitted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.聽
Once that bid was accepted, cities also had to vie to host matches. Ramasastry drafted the human rights action plan for Seattle. Because of her global and local expertise, she鈥檚 also chairing the human rights expert advisory group for FIFA 2026, headquartered in Miami. She worked on the 2026 World Cup鈥檚 human rights framework, which served as a baseline for cities to create their plans.
UW News caught up with Ramasastry to talk about the World Cup and human rights, Seattle鈥檚 action plan and more.
The point of having a human rights action plan is that you anticipate the harms that arise from the tournament and you try to mitigate them.
What is a human rights action plan and what potential issues do they address?
Anita Ramasastry: For every city that鈥檚 going to host the tournament, in every country, there are going to be human rights impacts. How do you identify harms and risks to unhoused people that are connected to the tournament? How do you ensure that people have the right to assemble and protest? Are workers being fairly paid?聽
There are all kinds of issues that arise that are connected to these sporting events. In different countries, there are different issues. Qatar had issues with migrant labor. In Russia, it was LGBTQ+ rights and discrimination. The controversy around Qatar happened after the bid was already awarded. The world tuned into what was happening there and started thinking about human rights.聽
The point of having a human rights action plan is that you anticipate the harms that arise from the tournament and you try to mitigate them. It鈥檚 been a bumpy ride because the issues we’re now dealing with are not the issues we originally thought we were going to be dealing with. Immigration issues are very different now. The issue of protests and counterprotests weren鈥檛 necessarily top of the list before, but they are now very much an issue for cities.聽
FIFA and the host cities also have a commitment to what we call 鈥渁ccess to remedy.鈥� If someone is harmed, there should be a way for them to be provided with relief and remediation. FIFA is going to have a grievance portal where people will be able to raise an issue and then FIFA is going to screen it.聽
This is the largest and most decentralized World Cup ever. FIFA says its role is to protect human rights in the stadium and to protect the human rights of athletes and workers in the stadium. It鈥檚 the cities鈥� job to deal with fan festivals or other events happening outside the FIFA zone. This has been a challenge because the cities don’t get extra money to deal with this. My job is to say we want to protect people 鈥� the fans, the workers, the communities 鈥� that may get impacted.
What issues are most pressing for Seattle and how did you identify them?
AR: For the Seattle bid, I consulted local stakeholders and they identified what they saw as the top salient risks. The main topics were human trafficking, issues related to unhoused populations, the right to protest, workers鈥� rights and discrimination against certain communities.聽
Now one of the biggest issues 鈥� and it鈥檚 challenging to address 鈥� is the rights of immigrant communities. We at the UW hosted a roundtable on safeguarding immigrant communities. We鈥檙e also working on a peaceful assembly toolkit about the rights of protestors 鈥� how they can ensure they鈥檙e doing things peacefully and lawfully.
Part of the idea is that the practices and protocols that are created for Seattle now can be used in the future. I’d love for Seattle to have good ways of dealing with things. When the MLB All-Star Game came to Seattle in 2023, there were . Those are exactly the issues we don’t want to have happen. If there’s a protest, we don’t want people to be harmed. We want to allow dissent in a proper way. It鈥檚 really about the legacy of: Are there mechanisms in place to address issues or, if there is harm, to resolve complaints in a way that helps people?
It鈥檚 really about the legacy of: Are there mechanisms in place to address issues or, if there is harm, to resolve complaints in a way that helps people?
Can you elaborate on past issues that led to this being the first World Cup to require human rights to be part of the bidding process?
AR: I think it’s a combination of several things. One is that there were the human rights standards that arose out of the United Nations. , a former Harvard professor, helped draft those. And he had such authority that he was then able to go to FIFA and advise on embedding human rights into its operations. FIFA was amenable to changing its governance standards, not only because it was called out because of questions about Qatar, but because it had been implicated. There were and a whole investigation by the Department of Justice. And so with FIFA being ensnared in the bribery and corruption charges, it was open to these other reforms. It was kind of a confluence of events.
At the same time, there was similar pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to do the same thing, so now the IOC also has its own commitment to human rights. It does work with host governments and they have ways in which human rights plans are mobilized. With the expertise we鈥檝e developed at the UW, I鈥檓 going to keep moving forward with our students. The Women鈥檚 World Cup may be coming to the U.S. in 2031 and the Olympics are in Los Angeles in 2028. Those are other opportunities to ensure safe events.
Speaking of your students, how do they engage with this work?
AR: I just taught a seminar this winter on human rights and the World Cup, so they were able to trace the journey from Qatar all the way to Seattle and beyond. We had people speaking about the World Cup, the LA Olympics and what it means to think about the World Cup going to Saudi Arabia in 2034, which is its own kind of interesting issue. Every week, students were able to meet with insiders 鈥� either in-person or virtually. The human rights officer from FIFA Zurich talked to them, as did the leader of the Dignity 2026 Coalition, which is a network of labor and human rights organizations uniting to protect groups who are at risk of adverse effects from the World Cup. Other speakers included former Olympic soccer gold medalist , who is the CEO of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights who worked on the United Bid, and , who graduated from the UW School of Law. She is the COO of the Seattle Reign and chaired the bid committee for Seattle. She now serves on the board of the Seattle 2026 Local Organizing Committee.
Students who want to do applied work helped write the Seattle bid. They were in the room for the roundtables we convened on immigration and peaceful protest, taking notes and writing summaries. My students have met with people who have dedicated their careers to human rights. For many of us, it鈥檚 about the people, right? No matter how much money is made, at the end of the day it should be made in a harm-free manner.
For more information, contact Lauren Kirschman at lkirsc@uw.edu.
Hear more from Anita Ramasastry
Anita Ramasastry will moderate 鈥淲orkers鈥� Rights in Seattle during the World Cup,鈥� a discussion with King County councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, on May 4 from 5-6:00 p.m.
The discussion is part of an ongoing speaker series from the UW Global Sport Lab where experts discuss the geopolitical, local and sporting implications of the 2026 FIFA Men鈥檚 World Cup in Seattle. These sessions are free and open to all via livestream. Registration is required. Please follow to RSVP.