World Cup 2026 and Human Rights

Introduction

World Cup 2026 and Human Rights are not a side issue attached to a football tournament. It is one of the central legal tests of the event. The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be held across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, with 104 matches, most of which will take place on United States territory. That matters because the event will unfold inside a legal and political environment shaped by border discretion, visa restrictions, ICE enforcement fears, protest policing, surveillance practices, and discrimination risks (Amnesty International, 2026; FIFA, 2026a).

FIFA presents the tournament as global, inclusive, and safe. That promise is easy to make in promotional language. It is harder to defend when fans, journalists, migrant workers, and local communities may experience the World Cup through immigration interviews, selective questioning, police exclusion zones, accreditation pressure, device searches, social media vetting, or fear of removal. The human rights issue is not only what happens inside stadiums. It is also what happens at airports, borders, fan zones, detention facilities, protest sites, and neighbourhoods placed under intensified security control.

A host state may secure its borders and protect public order. Public international law does not deny that power. Yet state authority over entry, policing, and security is not unlimited. Rules on non-discrimination, liberty, due process, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, protection against arbitrary detention, access to remedy and protection against return to serious harm constrain it. A World Cup does not suspend these obligations. It concentrates them in a short period, under global scrutiny, with millions of people exposed to state power in unusually visible ways.

The sharpest controversy concerns the United States. Most matches will be played there, and the current immigration policy has already placed the tournament under legal pressure. Rights organisations have warned that abusive immigration enforcement and discriminatory border control could affect not only foreign spectators, but also migrants living in host cities, workers supporting the event, journalists reporting on enforcement, and communities already exposed to aggressive policing (Amnesty International, 2026). The problem is not limited to actual detention. Fear itself can restrict rights. A person who avoids a match, a fan zone, a protest, a workplace complaint, or a media assignment because they fear ICE contact has already been pushed out of public life.

This article focuses on four connected risks: immigration enforcement, public security, expression, and discrimination. It does not try to cover every human rights issue linked to the 2026 World Cup. Labour conditions, housing pressure, environmental harm, and procurement deserve separate analysis. The narrower issue here is more immediate: how a security-heavy and immigration-driven mega-event may turn ordinary participation into a legal risk for the people FIFA claims to welcome.

FIFA cannot grant visas, direct border officers, or order immigration agencies to suspend enforcement. That limitation is real. It does not make FIFA passive. Its own competition regulations state that FIFA bears overall responsibility for organising, hosting and staging the tournament, even where local subsidiaries deliver operational projects in Canada, Mexico and the United States (FIFA, 2026a). FIFA’s human rights commitments also require more than public messaging. Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a powerful private actor connected to foreseeable rights risks must identify those risks, use leverage, seek prevention, enable remedy, and communicate what it is doing (United Nations, 2011).

The central contradiction is simple. Inclusion means little if supporters from certain countries face broad exclusion, if Muslim, Arab, African, Latino, or migrant communities are treated as security risks, if LGBTQI+ fans cannot be visible without fear, if journalists worry that immigration control may be used against critical reporting, or if peaceful protest is pushed away through vague security rules. A tournament cannot credibly claim to celebrate the world while allowing border control and public security to operate through fear, unequal treatment, and weak remedies.

The legal question is not whether Canada, Mexico, and the United States may control entry or protect public order. They may. The real question is how those powers are used, against whom, under what safeguards, and with what remedies. If the 2026 World Cup becomes a stage for deterrence, profiling, surveillance, and suppression of dissent, its human rights commitments will look decorative. If FIFA and the host authorities publish clear guarantees, allow independent monitoring, and create urgent remedies, the tournament can still become a serious test of rights-based mega-event governance.

1. The Rights Problem Behind the Tournament

The human rights problem behind the 2026 World Cup is not the existence of borders, policing, or stadium security. Those powers are normal features of state authority. The problem is the scale and intensity of those powers during a mega-event marketed as open to the world.

This article focuses on four risks: immigration enforcement, public security, expression, and discrimination. They are connected. Immigration control can deter attendance and reporting. Public security can restrict protests. Border screening can become discriminatory. Anti-discrimination promises can fail if fans, migrants, and journalists are afraid to be visible in public spaces.

The legal issue is practical. A fan may hold a ticket, but still be denied entry. A journalist may hold accreditation, but still face visa pressure, equipment checks, or border questioning. A migrant worker may help stage the event, but avoid reporting abuse. A local resident may avoid a fan zone because immigration enforcement has entered the security environment. These are not abstract legal concerns. They are predictable risks when a global sporting event is placed inside ordinary national enforcement systems.

International human rights law does not remove state control over admission, policing, or security. It does, however, restrict how that control is exercised. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects equality, liberty, movement, expression, assembly, and access to remedy as basic conditions of human dignity (United Nations General Assembly, 1948). The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects liberty and security of person, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and fair procedures in cases of expulsion for aliens lawfully present in a state (United Nations General Assembly, 1966). The Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination requires states to prevent discrimination based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin, including in public authorities and institutions (United Nations General Assembly, 1965).

The World Cup tests these obligations under pressure. States will want rapid decisions, visible security, and political control over risk. Human rights law asks a harder question: who carries the burden of that control, and what safeguards exist when it is applied unevenly?

1.1 A global event inside national power

FIFA sells the World Cup as a global tournament. That is commercially true. Legally, the event remains embedded in national power. The coercive decisions that affect people most directly will not usually be made by FIFA officials. They will be made by border agents, immigration officers, police forces, intelligence agencies, prosecutors, detention authorities, and, in some areas, private security operating under public frameworks.

This distinction matters. FIFA can set tournament rules, accreditation systems, stadium conditions, and human rights commitments. It can require non-discrimination in football operations. It can use contractual leverage with host authorities and local organising bodies. It cannot admit a traveller into the United States, Canada, or Mexico. It cannot order an immigration officer to approve entry. It cannot force a police commander to permit a protest outside a venue.

That limitation should not become an escape route. FIFA’s own 2026 regulations state that FIFA bears overall responsibility for organising, hosting, and staging the tournament, while local subsidiaries deliver operational projects in the host countries (FIFA, 2026a). FIFA is not merely renting stadiums and selling a spectacle. It is structuring an event that predictably exposes millions of people to state power.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are useful here because they separate two duties. States have the duty to protect human rights. Businesses and other powerful private actors have the responsibility to respect human rights, which includes due diligence, prevention, leverage, and remedy where they are connected to harm (United Nations, 2011). FIFA is not the United States government. Yet FIFA cannot credibly claim surprise if immigration enforcement, protest restrictions, or discriminatory policing become World Cup issues. These risks have been raised for years and are now specific, public, and foreseeable (Amnesty International, 2026; Human Rights Watch, 2026a).

The tournament’s human rights credibility will depend less on slogans than on operational limits. The key question is not whether FIFA has human rights language in its documents. The question is whether it has secured public guarantees, monitoring, rapid complaint channels, and practical safeguards where state power is most likely to affect fans, workers, journalists, and communities.

1.2 Why the United States dominates the risk

The United States dominates the human rights risk because it will host the largest share of matches and the final. Amnesty International describes the United States as the setting for roughly three-quarters of the tournament’s games (Amnesty International, 2026). That gives U.S. border, immigration, and security policy greater practical importance than the policies of Canada or Mexico, although all three host states carry human rights responsibilities.

The controversy is sharper because the Trump administration’s immigration and security policy has changed the risk environment. Rights organisations have reported aggressive immigration enforcement, expanded detention, fear among migrant communities, racialised policing concerns, travel restrictions affecting nationals of certain countries, and pressure on protest and journalism (Amnesty International, 2026; Human Rights Watch, 2026a). The White House and U.S. authorities may argue that border security, immigration enforcement, and event protection are legitimate sovereign functions. That answer addresses competence. It does not answer the human rights question.

The legal issue is not whether the United States may enforce immigration law. It may. The issue is whether enforcement around the tournament is predictable, non-discriminatory, proportionate, reviewable, and compatible with basic freedoms. A policy that makes people afraid to attend matches, join public gatherings, report enforcement, or participate in protests can damage rights before any formal arrest takes place.

This is why the United States is the centre of the article’s analysis. Canada and Mexico present serious issues, including protest restrictions, policing risks, treatment of migrants, journalist safety, and LGBTQI+ protection. Yet the combination of World Cup scale, U.S. match concentration, immigration enforcement politics, ICE involvement fears, travel restrictions, and border discretion makes the United States the main legal pressure point of the 2026 tournament.

2. Trump’s Immigration Policy and Fear

Immigration enforcement can violate rights through detention, removal, and discriminatory treatment. It can also weaken rights through fear. That second point is essential to understanding the 2026 World Cup.

Fear changes behaviour. People avoid public places. They do not report abuse. They avoid the police even when they are victims. They do not join protests. They decline interviews. They avoid fan zones, transport hubs, and stadium areas. For an event built around movement, visibility, and public gathering, that chilling effect is not a minor side consequence. It goes to the heart of participation.

Human rights analysis must account for this indirect harm. A state does not need to arrest thousands of people at stadium gates to create a rights problem. If enforcement policy makes large groups reasonably fear profiling, questioning, detention, or removal, the public character of the tournament changes. The World Cup becomes formally open, but practically unsafe for those who believe state power is aimed at them.

2.1 ICE and the climate of fear

ICE is central to the rights debate because immigration enforcement in the United States is not confined to airports or border crossings. Rights organisations have warned that federal immigration operations, local cooperation with immigration authorities, and detention expansion create risks for visitors and local communities during the tournament (Amnesty International, 2026; Human Rights Watch, 2026b).

The legal problem is broader than actual detention. A migrant living in a host city may avoid a public watch party because they fear enforcement. A worker cleaning or serving at a venue may stay silent about exploitation because contact with authorities feels dangerous. A journalist may hesitate before covering immigration raids if visa status, accreditation, or removal could be used as pressure. A family with mixed immigration status may decide that a match is not worth the exposure.

Fear becomes legally relevant when it limits the practical use of rights. Freedom of expression and peaceful assembly require more than formal permission to speak or gather. They require conditions in which people can use those freedoms without arbitrary punishment, discriminatory targeting, or intimidation. Liberty protections also lose force if detention is used in a way that makes communities withdraw from public life. Equality is damaged when some groups can celebrate openly, while others attend under suspicion.

The World Cup increases the stakes because football is deeply rooted in immigrant and diaspora communities. A tournament that should bring those communities into public space may have the opposite effect if ICE is perceived as part of the security architecture. The risk is not limited to undocumented migrants. Lawful residents, asylum seekers, mixed-status families, foreign students, visiting supporters, and journalists can all be affected by a climate in which immigration control becomes unpredictable and politicised.

A legally credible host strategy would draw clear lines. Immigration enforcement should not be allowed to shadow stadiums, fan zones, watch parties, transport hubs, or protest sites in a way that turns football participation into a risk assessment. Without clear guarantees, the public may reasonably suspect that ordinary tournament activity could become an enforcement opportunity.

2.2 The proposed ICE Truce

Human Rights Watch has called for an ICE Truce during the World Cup, meaning public guarantees that immigration enforcement will not target games, venues, and related events (Human Rights Watch, 2026b). The proposal is not a demand for permanent immigration reform. It is a tournament-specific safeguard designed to prevent a global sporting event from becoming a channel for fear, profiling, or removal.

The idea is legally stronger than it may first appear. States often adjust enforcement priorities during major events. They create traffic zones, special transport rules, emergency plans, policing protocols, and diplomatic arrangements. A temporary immigration-enforcement pause around World Cup sites would fit that logic. It would not abolish immigration law. It would define where and how enforcement should not be used because the risk to rights is too high.

The proposed truce matters because ordinary remedies are too slow for a short tournament. A person detained during a match week may miss the event, lose work, lose contact with family, face removal pressure, or lose accreditation before any meaningful legal review occurs. Later judicial review may be formally available, but practically useless. Human rights protection during a mega-event must operate in real time.

FIFA has leverage, although not command. It can request written guarantees. It can make those guarantees public. It can require host-city human rights plans to address immigration enforcement directly. It can create complaint channels linked to local legal assistance. It can invite independent monitoring by human rights organisations, bar associations, and community groups. It can press sponsors and broadcasters to support a rights-protective framework. None of this requires FIFA to become a government. It requires FIFA to act like an organisation that profits from a tournament and accepts human rights responsibilities.

If FIFA refuses to use that leverage, neutrality becomes a weak defence. The tournament is not happening around FIFA by accident. FIFA selected, structured, and commercialised the event. A foreseeable rights risk connected to that structure cannot be dismissed as a purely domestic matter.

2.3 Detention, removal, and due process

Detention and removal are the hardest legal edges of the World Cup immigration problem. The relevant risks include arbitrary detention, lack of prompt access to lawyers, language barriers, inadequate interpretation, consular notification failures, family separation, rushed removal, and limited judicial review.

International law does not prohibit immigration detention in every case. It does require detention to be lawful, non-arbitrary, necessary, proportionate, and subject to meaningful review (Human Rights Committee, 2014). Detention cannot become a default response to administrative status questions. It becomes especially troubling when used against people who present no security threat, have family or community ties, or are trying to attend, work at, report on, or protest around a public event.

Consular access is also practical, not decorative. Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, foreign nationals who are detained must be informed of their right to have their consulate notified, and consular officers must be able to communicate with and assist them (United Nations, 1963). During a World Cup, this matters. A detained fan may not understand the legal system. A journalist may need urgent contact with an embassy. A worker may need interpretation, documents, and legal advice before removal pressure becomes irreversible.

Due process must also account for language. Interpretation is essential when a person is questioned, detained, or asked to sign documents. Without it, apparent consent may be meaningless. This is particularly serious in a tournament involving supporters across continents, many of whom may not speak English or understand U.S. immigration procedures.

Family separation adds another layer. A parent detained after a traffic stop, workplace encounter, or public gathering may be separated from children or relatives during the tournament. Even short detention can cause severe harm when it occurs far away from legal support or community networks. Human rights law treats family life, liberty, and protection against arbitrary interference as connected interests, not isolated categories (United Nations General Assembly, 1966).

The practical solution is not complicated. Host authorities should publish World Cup-specific safeguards on detention, consular contact, interpretation, access to lawyers, emergency legal review, and protection against removal before meaningful review. If those safeguards are absent, the risk is not only bad optics. It is a predictable failure of rights protection.

3. Discrimination at the Border and Beyond

Discrimination is the bridge between immigration control and human rights. Border systems classify people by nationality, passport, visa status, and purpose of travel. Some distinctions are lawful. Others become abusive when they operate as broad exclusion, religious suspicion, racial profiling, or unequal protection.

A World Cup intensifies the problem because the event claims global openness. If supporters of certain countries are formally qualified to attend, but practically barred by nationality restrictions, long visa delays, travel bans, or discretionary screening, the tournament’s inclusion narrative becomes legally fragile. The problem is not only inconvenience. It is unequal access to a global event shaped by state power and commercial profit.

Anti-discrimination law does not require identical treatment of every traveller in every situation. It does require objective justification, lawful procedures, non-arbitrary decisions, and safeguards against racial, religious, and ethnic profiling. The Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is especially relevant because it reaches public authorities and state institutions, including border and law enforcement practices (United Nations General Assembly, 1965).

3.1 Nationality restrictions

Nationality-based visa systems are common. States routinely impose different entry requirements on different passport holders. That does not automatically violate international law. The legal concern arises when nationality restrictions become sweeping, politically charged, and weakly connected to individualised risk.

Current U.S. restrictions have been reported to affect nationals of dozens of countries, with limited exceptions for some participants in major sporting events (United States Department of State, 2026). The key distinction is between tournament participants and ordinary spectators. A carve-out for players, coaches, or essential staff does not solve the human rights problem if supporters, journalists, sponsors, or community members remain exposed to broad exclusion.

This is where FIFA’s inclusion promise becomes vulnerable. A country can qualify for the World Cup while many of its supporters cannot realistically attend matches in the United States. Amnesty International has warned that fans linked to several qualified countries may face serious barriers because of U.S. travel restrictions (Amnesty International, 2026). A tournament can still proceed under those conditions, but its claim to global access becomes weaker.

The legal point should be stated carefully. International law does not give every foreign fan an automatic right to enter the United States. Yet broad nationality restrictions still raise human rights concerns when they separate people by country of origin in a way that appears excessive, discriminatory, or insufficiently reviewable. The more a restriction operates as collective suspicion rather than individual assessment, the harder it is to reconcile with equality and due process principles.

A credible World Cup framework would require transparency. Affected supporters should know the rule, the exception, the evidence required, the appeal or review route, and the limits of discretion. Without that, visa systems become a silent filter that excludes people before the tournament begins.

3.2 Racial and religious profiling

Profiling is one of the most serious risks because it often hides inside ordinary security language. A border officer may describe questioning as routine. A police unit may describe a stop as public safety work. A device search may be framed as national security screening. The legal issue is what patterns emerge: who is questioned, who is searched, whose phone is examined, whose social media is treated as suspicious, and whose presence is read as a threat.

Muslim, Arab, African, Latino, and migrant communities are especially exposed to this risk in the U.S. context. Rights organisations have raised concerns about discriminatory enforcement, social media vetting, and screening practices that may treat political views, religious identity, nationality, or ethnicity as risk indicators (Amnesty International, 2026; Human Rights Watch, 2026a). These concerns become sharper when a global event draws visitors and diaspora communities into highly securitised spaces.

Device searches and social media scrutiny deserve particular attention. They can chill speech and association even when no entry refusal occurs. A fan who knows that political posts, religious expression, criticism of U.S. policy, or solidarity with a protest movement may be reviewed at the border may self-censor long before travel. A journalist may avoid sensitive reporting. A student or activist may delete lawful expression out of fear that it will be misunderstood.

Human rights law does not prohibit all security screening. It does require legality, necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination. Vague criteria such as ideological hostility, perceived disloyalty, or political criticism are dangerous because they allow border control to slide into viewpoint control. That is especially serious during a World Cup, where political expression around flags, chants, banners, and national identity is unavoidable.

The same risk exists beyond the border. Local policing around stadiums and fan zones may reproduce immigration and racial profiling patterns. If Latino fans are treated as immigration suspects, Muslim fans as security risks, African fans as disorder risks, or Arab fans as politically suspect, the tournament becomes unequal in practice. Anti-discrimination campaigns inside stadiums cannot cure discriminatory state conduct outside them.

3.3 LGBTQI+ visibility and safety

LGBTQI+ safety must be treated as a legal duty, not a branding slogan. FIFA and host authorities cannot claim inclusion while leaving LGBTQI+ fans to calculate whether visible identity, clothing, flags, public affection, or protest could expose them to harassment, discriminatory policing, or unequal protection.

The legal issue is not limited to private violence. States have positive obligations to protect people against foreseeable harm, investigate abuse, and apply public security measures without discrimination. When authorities know that certain groups may be targeted during a mass event, passivity becomes a governance failure. Equal protection requires prevention, not only reaction after harm has occurred.

The U.S. setting again creates a sharper controversy because rights organisations have linked the tournament to a wider hostile environment affecting LGBTQI+ people, migrants, and racialised communities (Amnesty International, 2026). LGBTQI+ supporters have also expressed concern about the visible presence at the tournament. The precise risk will vary by city, venue, and public event, but the legal standard is consistent: fans must be able to participate without harassment, discriminatory policing, or official indifference.

This requires concrete planning. Police and private security need clear instructions on anti-LGBTQI+ abuse, hate incidents, misgendering, crowd harassment, and unequal treatment. Complaint channels must be fast and accessible. Fan zones must be designed with safety in mind. Host authorities must consult LGBTQI+ supporter groups before the event, not after incidents occur. FIFA should enforce anti-discrimination rules and require host-city plans to address visibility and safety in public areas around the tournament.

The deeper point is simple. Visibility is part of participation. A fan who can attend only by hiding their identity is not fully included. A journalist who avoids covering LGBTQI+ safety because of hostility or official pressure is not free. A public authority that protects some fans more readily than others is not neutral. For the 2026 World Cup to satisfy its human rights commitments, safety must mean equal safety for people whose presence may be politically or socially contested.

4. Expression, Protest, and Journalism

World Cup 2026 and Human Rights become especially important when the tournament moves beyond sport and enters the terrain of expression, protest, and journalism. World Cups attract political speech because they place national identity, public money, policing, migration, discrimination, foreign policy, and corporate power in the same public space. Fans do not arrive only as consumers. Many arrive as citizens, migrants, workers, activists, journalists, and members of communities affected by state policy.

The legal issue is not the existence of security rules. Stadiums need crowd management, anti-violence measures, emergency planning, and restrictions on genuinely dangerous conduct. The problem begins when security and reputation management are used to suppress peaceful dissent. A rule designed to stop violence is one thing. A vague rule used to remove a banner criticising immigration raids, police abuse, racism, war, or discrimination is another.

Freedom of expression protects unpopular, uncomfortable, and critical speech. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights allows restrictions only when they are provided by law and necessary for a legitimate aim, such as public order or the rights of others (United Nations General Assembly, 1966). The Human Rights Committee has made clear that restrictions cannot be vague, excessive, or used to shield public authorities from criticism (Human Rights Committee, 2011). That standard matters during the 2026 World Cup because many disputes will arise in fast-moving public settings, not in calm legal proceedings.

The same point applies to peaceful assembly. Public order can justify some limits, but not blanket suppression. Authorities may regulate time, place, and manner. They may not treat a protest near a World Cup venue as unlawful simply because it is embarrassing, politically sensitive, or visible to international media. The right to peaceful assembly includes demonstrations that disturb, inconvenience, or criticise public authorities (Human Rights Committee, 2020).

The 2026 tournament creates a predictable tension. FIFA wants a controlled global spectacle. Host governments want secure venues and positive international exposure. Protesters and journalists may want to draw attention to immigration enforcement, policing, racial discrimination, LGBTQI+ safety, labour abuses, disappearances in Mexico, housing displacement, or restrictions affecting supporters from certain countries. The law does not allow the first two interests to erase the third.

4.1 Political messages in stadiums

Stadium speech will be one of the most contested areas of the tournament. Political expression can appear through banners, flags, chants, clothing, armbands, posters, symbols, gestures, and coordinated silence. Some messages may be provocative. Some may be clumsy. Some may be deeply important to communities affected by state action.

FIFA can regulate stadium safety. It can prohibit violence, incitement, discriminatory abuse, pitch invasions, and items that create genuine security risks. It can also manage crowd flow and emergency access. Those powers are legitimate. They become legally weak when broad bans on political messages are used to suppress peaceful rights-based speech.

The word “political” is the danger point. It can be stretched too far. A banner calling for equal treatment of migrants is political. A flag supporting LGBTQI+ visibility can be treated as political. A chant against racism is political. A shirt criticising deportations is political. If all political expression is treated as suspect, the rule does not protect safety. It protects the event’s image.

That distinction matters because many human rights claims are political in content. Anti-racism, refugee protection, gender equality, LGBTQI+ safety, press freedom, and opposition to arbitrary detention all involve public power. Removing those messages because they are political can turn a stadium rule into a censorship tool.

FIFA’s position is exposed because its own human rights commitments depend on public credibility. It cannot promote inclusion while treating peaceful rights-based expression as a threat to the brand. Amnesty International has criticised restrictions on political messages and symbols in World Cup contexts, especially where those restrictions affect fans, players, and officials seeking to raise rights concerns (Amnesty International, 2026). The more vague the restriction, the easier it becomes for stewards and police to enforce it unevenly.

A legally safer approach would distinguish between harmful conduct and peaceful expression. Racist abuse, threats, incitement to violence, and targeted harassment can be prohibited. Peaceful criticism of government policy, policing, discrimination, or FIFA itself should not be removed merely because it is uncomfortable. A tournament that claims to celebrate the world must tolerate lawful disagreement about the world.

The same standard should apply to flags and symbols. Some symbols may be restricted if they are directly linked to violence, hatred, or credible safety risks. A general ban on politically sensitive flags or rights symbols would be difficult to defend. In a World Cup, national identity and political identity often overlap. Selective enforcement would create an additional discrimination problem, especially if some national, religious, ethnic, or LGBTQI+ symbols are treated as disruptive while others are accepted as ordinary fan culture.

4.2 Protest near World Cup venues

Protest outside stadiums, fan zones, hotels, training sites, transport hubs, and FIFA-linked spaces will be another major legal test. The issue is not only formal legality. It is also practical access. A protest that is legally allowed, but pushed far away from the relevant audience, may lose its purpose.

Authorities may use exclusion zones, permit systems, dispersal powers, crowd-control barriers, surveillance, pre-emptive stops, and police warnings. Some of those tools may be lawful in limited settings. A narrow cordon around a stadium entrance can protect safety. A clear route for emergency vehicles is legitimate. A permit system can help avoid dangerous clashes between large groups. The problem begins when these tools are used to make the protest invisible.

Blanket restrictions near World Cup venues would be hard to justify. A mega-event does not create a rights-free perimeter. The Human Rights Committee has emphasised that peaceful assemblies may take place in public spaces and should normally be facilitated within sight and sound of their intended audience (Human Rights Committee, 2020). That principle is crucial during a World Cup because the intended audience may include FIFA, sponsors, foreign media, national delegations, government officials, and fans.

Police intimidation can suppress protest without a formal ban. Heavy deployment, filming of participants, identity checks, immigration questioning, threats of arrest, or aggressive dispersal orders can make people leave before any court can assess legality. For migrants, asylum seekers, foreign students, workers, and journalists, that pressure can be especially effective. The fear of later immigration consequences may silence people even where the assembly itself is peaceful.

The United States presents the sharpest concern because immigration enforcement and protest policing may overlap. If people believe that joining a protest near a stadium could expose them to ICE contact, the right to peaceful assembly is weakened. The state may insist that protest is technically allowed, but that answer is inadequate if the surrounding enforcement environment makes participation unsafe for specific communities.

Mexico also presents serious risks. Protests around the opening match could involve families of disappeared persons, feminist groups, journalists, Indigenous communities, and organisations challenging militarised public security. Public order concerns may be real, but they cannot justify removing grief, criticism, or demands for accountability from the tournament’s public space.

Canada faces a different set of concerns, including protests connected to housing, homelessness, Indigenous rights, policing, and public expenditure. All three host states must treat protests as a protected democratic activity, not as a reputational problem.

The legal test should be concrete. Restrictions must be lawful, clear, necessary, proportionate, and non-discriminatory. They must be based on specific risks, not general embarrassment. They must leave realistic channels for protest near relevant audiences. They must avoid immigration intimidation. They must include rapid review, because a protest unlawfully blocked during a six-week tournament cannot be repaired months later through ordinary litigation.

4.3 Journalists under immigration pressure

Journalists are not ordinary spectators. They are part of the accountability structure around the tournament. Their work may expose immigration enforcement, border discrimination, protest restrictions, policing failures, labour abuse, surveillance, LGBTQI+ safety risks, or official misconduct. A World Cup with weak press freedom becomes easier to manage, but harder to trust.

The pressure on journalists can operate through visa control, accreditation, border questioning, equipment checks, device searches, source exposure, denial of entry, or fear of deportation. These tools do not need to be used frequently to have a chilling effect. One high-profile denial, detention, or removal can warn others to avoid sensitive reporting.

FIFA’s media visa guidance recognises that admission to the United States, Canada, and Mexico is not guaranteed, and that media representatives may need different forms of authorisation depending on their role and destination (FIFA, 2026b). That is administratively accurate. It also reveals the vulnerability. Accreditation does not neutralise border discretion. A journalist approved to cover the tournament may still face state control before reaching the press area.

The risk is not limited to foreign correspondents. Local journalists may also face police pressure, arrest risks, surveillance, or restricted access near protest areas and detention sites. In Mexico, journalist safety has long been a serious human rights concern. In the United States, reporting on immigration enforcement, protests, and policing can place journalists in direct contact with agencies whose conduct they are investigating. In Canada, public-order operations and local restrictions may affect coverage of protests, homelessness, and community displacement.

International standards protect journalism because public access to information is part of freedom of expression (Human Rights Committee, 2011). The state may impose limited accreditation rules for access to controlled spaces, but it must not use accreditation to control viewpoint. It may protect secure areas, but it must not use equipment checks to expose sources without legal safeguards. It may enforce immigration rules, but it must not use visa status to punish critical reporting.

The World Cup needs a press-freedom protocol. Journalists should receive clear visa guidance, protection against arbitrary accreditation withdrawal, access to rapid legal assistance, safeguards for equipment and source material, and emergency channels for detention or removal threats. FIFA should not treat press access as a technical issue. During a human rights-sensitive tournament, journalism is part of the safeguard system.

5. Surveillance and Security Expansion

Security expansion is one of the least visible human rights risks of the 2026 World Cup. It may not look like censorship or detention. It may look like efficient screening, faster entry, risk management, and smart policing. Yet surveillance can restrict privacy, expression, association, movement, and equality at the same time.

Mega-events often create pressure for exceptional security measures. Authorities may expand background checks, integrate databases, use watchlists, increase camera coverage, monitor crowds, review online activity, and coordinate public agencies with private contractors. Some measures may be justified by genuine safety needs. The risk is mission creep. Tools introduced for tournament security can become normalised, poorly reviewed, or applied beyond their original purpose.

Privacy is not a luxury right. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects individuals against arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, family, home, and correspondence (United Nations General Assembly, 1966). Modern surveillance can interfere with those interests through data collection, database matching, biometric identification, social media analysis, device searches, and information sharing. The legal problem is not only what data is collected. It is who is targeted, who can challenge errors, how long information is retained, and how it may be used after the event.

Surveillance also affects speech. People speak differently when they believe they are being watched. Protesters may stay home. Journalists may avoid contact with sources. Migrants may avoid public transport near venues. Fans may delete lawful political expression before travelling. In a tournament already marked by immigration anxiety, surveillance can deepen fear.

5.1 Background checks and watchlists

Background checks and watchlists raise serious legal concerns because they often combine broad discretion with weak transparency. A person may be delayed, denied entry, questioned, excluded from a venue, or placed under additional scrutiny without knowing the factual basis for the decision.

Mass screening can be attractive during a World Cup because it promises speed and control. Authorities may screen accredited personnel, contractors, volunteers, journalists, private security workers, drivers, vendors, and, in some contexts, fans. Screening may also involve database checks against criminal, immigration, terrorism, or public-order records. The risk is not only wrongful exclusion. It is the creation of a security filter that treats error as acceptable collateral damage.

Watchlists are especially dangerous when they contain inaccurate, outdated, or politically biased information. A name may match the wrong person. A past protest may be misread as a security threat. A social media post may be taken out of context. An immigration record may be incomplete. A person may be associated with a group or nationality rather than an individualised risk. Once a watchlist label attaches, a practical remedy can be difficult.

The legal standard should be strict. Screening must have a clear legal basis, a defined purpose, limited data access, independent oversight, and an effective challenge procedure. A person excluded from work, accreditation, travel, or venue access should know the reason, unless a narrowly defined security exception applies. Even then, some form of independent review must exist. Secret systems with no meaningful appeal are incompatible with basic rule-of-law expectations.

The discrimination risk is obvious. Watchlists and background checks may disproportionately affect Muslim, Arab, African, Latino, migrant, and politically active communities. If screening relies on nationality, religion, activism, travel history, or online opinion as a proxy for risk, it can reproduce the same inequalities that anti-discrimination law is meant to prevent. The World Cup cannot be rights-compliant if security screening quietly excludes people based on group suspicion.

5.2 Social media vetting

Social media vetting links security to expression in a direct way. It turns speech into a border, accreditation, or security risk. During the 2026 World Cup, this matters because many travellers, journalists, students, activists, and fans have public online histories involving politics, war, migration, policing, religion, race, gender, and sexuality.

Online screening may be defended as a security tool. The problem lies in vague criteria. If authorities review posts for violence or specific threats, the legal issue is narrower. If they review ideology, criticism of government, solidarity with protesters, religious expression, support for Palestinian rights, opposition to immigration policy, or perceived disloyalty, the screening becomes far more dangerous. It can punish lawful expression before a person reaches the event.

The chilling effect is predictable. A fan may delete posts criticising ICE. A journalist may avoid publishing a thread about border discrimination. An activist may remove protest material. A student may hide lawful political views. This is not free expression in any meaningful sense. It is an expression conditioned by fear of official interpretation.

The Human Rights Committee has stressed that restrictions on expression must be necessary and proportionate, and that states must not prohibit criticism of public institutions merely because it is offensive or unwelcome (Human Rights Committee, 2011). Social media vetting that treats lawful criticism as a security concern conflicts with that approach. It also creates equality risks if Muslim, Arab, African, Latino, or migrant users face heavier scrutiny than others.

Social media screening is also prone to context failure. Sarcasm, translation, religious language, political slogans, football rivalry, images, and reposted material can be misunderstood. Automated tools may worsen the problem by treating keywords as risk indicators without social or linguistic context. During a multinational tournament, this risk multiplies because visitors speak many languages and use political symbols that may be unfamiliar to U.S., Canadian, or Mexican authorities.

A rights-compliant approach would require narrow criteria, human review, documented reasons, appeal options, and strict limits on data retention. It would also require public clarity. People should not have to guess which lawful opinions may make them suspicious.

5.3 Private security and state control

Private security will play a major role around stadiums, fan zones, hotels, training sites, media centres, sponsor events, and controlled access areas. That is normal for a mega-event. Yet private involvement can blur responsibility. A person removed by a private guard, denied entry by a contractor, filmed by a private operator, or searched under a stadium protocol may not know who is legally accountable.

States cannot avoid human rights responsibility by outsourcing operational control. If private actors exercise functions connected to public security, state authorities remain responsible for the legal framework, supervision, accountability, and remedy. The Articles on State Responsibility recognise that conduct may be attributable to a state where entities exercise governmental authority or act under state direction or control (International Law Commission, 2001). Human rights law also requires states to protect individuals against abuses by private actors when the risk is foreseeable and preventable.

FIFA also has responsibilities. Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a private organisation connected to human rights risks must conduct due diligence, use leverage, and support remedies (United Nations, 2011). Private security contractors working in FIFA-controlled or FIFA-linked spaces should not operate as a legal grey zone. Their conduct must be covered by clear rules on searches, use of force, discrimination, complaints, data handling, removal decisions, and cooperation with police or immigration authorities.

The immigration link is especially serious. Private security should not be used as a channel for immigration suspicion. Venue staff should not be encouraged to question status, report people based on appearance or language, or coordinate with immigration authorities except in clearly defined legal circumstances. If private security becomes an informal immigration filter, the tournament will reproduce the climate of fear described earlier.

Complaint mechanisms must be practical. A fan removed from a stadium, a journalist blocked at a media centre, or a worker mistreated by a contractor cannot wait months for a corporate grievance process. The World Cup needs rapid, multilingual, independent complaint routes with the power to escalate urgent cases. Without that, private security becomes one more layer of control with weak accountability.

6. FIFA’s Legal and Moral Exposure

FIFA’s exposure is not the same as state responsibility. FIFA cannot grant visas, command ICE, rewrite U.S. border policy, or control every police decision in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. That limitation should be acknowledged. It should not be exaggerated.

FIFA is not a passive spectator. It owns and structures the tournament. It selects hosts, sets requirements, controls commercial rights, regulates accreditation, shapes stadium conditions, coordinates local subsidiaries, negotiates with public authorities, and benefits financially from the event. Its own regulations state that FIFA bears overall responsibility for organising, hosting, and staging the 2026 World Cup (FIFA, 2026a). That responsibility has legal, operational, and moral consequences.

The central question is not if FIFA can solve every rights problem. It cannot. The question is if FIFA has used every reasonable form of leverage to prevent foreseeable harm. Immigration fear, discriminatory border control, protest restrictions, surveillance, press pressure, and LGBTQI+ safety risks are not surprising or speculative. They are public, documented, and connected to the tournament’s design (Amnesty International, 2026; Human Rights Watch, 2026a).

6.1 FIFA’s promise of inclusion

The credibility of the World Cup 2026 and Human Rights will be judged by the experience of people who carry the highest risk. Inclusion does not mean much if wealthy fans with easy passports move freely while supporters from restricted countries are blocked. It does not mean much if migrants in host cities avoid fan zones because they fear enforcement. It does not mean much if LGBTQI+ fans can attend only by reducing visibility. It does not mean much if journalists can cover football, but hesitate to cover immigration raids, policing, or protests.

This is the weakness of rights branding. It can sound impressive while changing little. Anti-discrimination slogans, diversity campaigns, and ceremonial language do not protect a person facing border exclusion, profiling, detention, or police intimidation. They may even deepen mistrust if they are not matched by concrete safeguards.

The 2026 World Cup puts FIFA in a difficult position because the gap between public language and legal reality is unusually visible. FIFA can present the tournament as a celebration of global unity. Yet the tournament operates inside separate national entry systems, with no single World Cup visa, no automatic right of admission for ticket holders, and broad discretion at borders (FIFA, 2026b). For supporters facing travel restrictions, long visa delays, or discriminatory screening, inclusion may be more symbolic than real.

A serious inclusion policy would start with risk. FIFA should identify the people most likely to be excluded, questioned, detained, harassed, or silenced. It should assess which nationalities face the highest entry barriers, which communities fear ICE contact, which journalists may face pressure, which fan groups need protection, and which protest areas are likely to be restricted. FIFA should answer those questions publicly, not bury them in general commitments.

The standard is not perfection. The standard is seriousness. FIFA must show that inclusion means operational protection, not decorative language.

6.2 Human rights due diligence

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provide the clearest framework for assessing FIFA’s responsibilities. They require business actors to avoid infringing on human rights, address adverse impacts connected to their operations, and conduct due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address human rights risks (United Nations, 2011). FIFA’s role in the World Cup places it squarely within that model.

Due diligence is not a public-relations exercise. It requires a structured process. FIFA must identify the risks linked to the tournament, assess who may be harmed, use leverage over host authorities and contractors, track the effectiveness of safeguards, communicate publicly, and provide or support remedies where harm occurs. The more severe and foreseeable the risk, the stronger the expected response.

For the 2026 World Cup, proper due diligence should include enforceable host-state assurances. General cooperation is not enough. FIFA should demand clear public commitments on immigration enforcement near venues, fan zones, transport hubs, protest sites, and media areas. It should seek guarantees on non-discriminatory border screening, consular access, interpretation, detention safeguards, protest facilitation, press freedom, privacy protection, and LGBTQI+ safety.

FIFA should also require independent monitoring. Internal reporting is insufficient where the alleged risks involve state agencies, police, border officers, immigration enforcement, and private security. Monitoring should cover stadium areas, fan zones, protest routes, detention-related incidents, media access, and discrimination complaints. It should include civil society groups, legal organisations, community representatives, and human rights experts.

Complaint channels must be fast. Ordinary legal remedies may be too slow for a six-week tournament. A fan detained during match week, a journalist threatened with removal, a worker facing retaliation, or a protester arrested near a venue needs urgent assistance. A credible system would include multilingual hotlines, legal referral networks, emergency escalation to FIFA and host authorities, public reporting, and follow-up after the tournament.

FIFA should also publish its safeguards before the event begins. A rights policy disclosed after incidents occur has limited value. Fans, journalists, workers, and communities need to know what protections exist before deciding to travel, work, report, protest, or attend public events.

6.3 The limits of FIFA neutrality

FIFA often prefers neutrality because football depends on global participation and political compromise. Neutrality can be useful when it prevents the organisation from becoming a tool of one government. It becomes indefensible when it is used to avoid foreseeable human rights risks connected to FIFA’s own event.

Host-state sovereignty is real. The United States, Canada, and Mexico control their borders, police powers, public-order rules, and detention systems. FIFA cannot replace those states. Yet sovereignty does not remove FIFA’s responsibility to use leverage. The UN Guiding Principles recognise that companies may be connected to harm through business relationships and must seek to prevent or mitigate adverse impacts where they can (United Nations, 2011).

The stronger FIFA’s commercial and operational role, the weaker its neutrality defence becomes. FIFA selects the host framework, controls tournament rules, licenses commercial rights, sets accreditation systems, and negotiates with public authorities. It benefits from public infrastructure, security planning, policing, visas, broadcasting, hospitality, sponsorship, and fan movement. It cannot accept those benefits while treating rights risks as external.

Neutrality also fails as a moral position when the risk is fear. If fans avoid public spaces because they fear detention or profiling, FIFA’s silence is not neutral in effect. It favours the security environment that produced the fear. If journalists avoid immigration reporting because visa pressure is plausible, silence favours the authorities capable of applying that pressure. If LGBTQI+ fans reduce visibility because protection is uncertain, silence favours the conditions that make visibility unsafe.

The legally disciplined position is simple. FIFA does not need to become an opposition party, a court, or an immigration agency. It needs to act as a powerful organiser with foreseeable human rights risks. That means public guarantees, due diligence, independent monitoring, urgent remedies, and refusal to let inclusion language substitute for protection.

If FIFA fails to do this, the 2026 World Cup will expose a familiar weakness in mega-event governance. Human rights commitments will look strong in bid documents and weak at the point of enforcement. The damage would not be limited to reputation. It would affect the people who must decide if attending a match, reporting a story, wearing a symbol, joining a protest, or entering a fan zone is worth the risk.

7. What Compliance Should Look Like

A credible human rights framework for the 2026 World Cup cannot rely on broad promises. It needs a concrete legal test. Fans, workers, journalists, protesters, and local communities should be able to know what protections apply, who is responsible, how violations will be reported, and what urgent remedies exist.

The test should be practical: clear guarantees before the event, independent monitoring during the event, and fast remedies when harm occurs. Anything weaker leaves human rights protection dependent on public relations, discretion, and after-the-fact explanations.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights require prevention, mitigation, tracking, communication, and remedy when a business actor is connected to foreseeable human rights risks (United Nations, 2011). For FIFA, that means due diligence must move beyond internal policy documents. It must reach border control, immigration enforcement, protest policing, accreditation, private security, data use, and complaint systems.

For host states, the legal baseline is equally clear. Security and immigration powers must be lawful, necessary, proportionate, non-discriminatory, and open to effective review. A World Cup does not create an exception to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Convention against Torture, or consular notification duties under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (United Nations, 1963; United Nations General Assembly, 1965; United Nations General Assembly, 1966; United Nations General Assembly, 1984).

7.1 Public guarantees

The first requirement is public guarantees. Host authorities should state, before the tournament begins, where immigration enforcement will and will not occur. They should identify the protections that apply to fans, workers, journalists, protesters, and local residents, especially around stadiums, fan zones, transport hubs, hotels, training sites, media centres, and protest areas.

Vague assurances will not be enough. People need to know if immigration enforcement will be excluded from stadium areas, fan festivals, public watch parties, transport routes, medical facilities, shelters, and protest sites. They also need to know if local police will share information with immigration agencies after minor encounters, crowd-control incidents, workplace complaints, or public-order stops.

The United States should publish the clearest guarantees because the sharpest risks arise there. If ICE forms part of the wider security environment, affected communities will not separate “event security” from immigration control. A fan with irregular status, a mixed-status family, an asylum seeker, or a migrant worker may avoid public spaces unless the limits are explicit. Human Rights Watch’s call for an ICE Truce reflects this need for defined, public, event-specific safeguards (Human Rights Watch, 2026).

Public guarantees should also cover due process. Authorities should state how detained foreign nationals will receive access to lawyers, interpretation, consular notification, medical care, family contact, and judicial review. They should explain how urgent removal threats will be paused when a person has a credible claim, a pending review, or a need for consular assistance. These points are not technical details. They decide if rights are usable during the tournament.

FIFA should not treat these guarantees as optional host-state courtesy. It should request them, publish them, and explain the consequences if they are not respected. Its own role in organising, hosting, and staging the tournament gives it enough leverage to demand operational clarity (FIFA, 2026a). If FIFA can negotiate stadium rules, sponsorship protections, media access, and commercial restrictions, it can also press for human rights safeguards.

7.2 Independent monitoring

The second requirement is independent monitoring. FIFA and the host authorities should not monitor themselves alone. A tournament that raises risks of immigration abuse, protest suppression, discrimination, surveillance, and private security misconduct needs external scrutiny.

Monitoring should cover venues, fan zones, protest areas, detention-related incidents, transport hubs, media access points, and locations where immigration enforcement may intersect with tournament activity. It should not be limited to stadium interiors. Many of the most serious human rights risks will occur outside the match itself, at the border, on the street, near a protest, in a police van, or inside a detention facility.

The monitoring body should include human rights experts, civil society organisations, lawyers, community representatives, migrant-support groups, LGBTQI+ organisations, press-freedom specialists, and independent observers with access to relevant areas. Its mandate should include receiving complaints, escalating urgent cases, publishing interim findings, and identifying patterns of abuse.

Detention monitoring is especially important. A person detained during the tournament can disappear from public attention quickly. They may be moved, pressured to sign documents, separated from family, or denied meaningful access to counsel. Independent monitors should be able to track detention cases connected to World Cup activity, including arrests near venues, fan zones, protests, transport corridors, workplaces, and accommodation sites.

Protest monitoring is equally important. Observers should record the use of exclusion zones, dispersal orders, force, identity checks, filming, immigration questioning, and arrests. A protest unlawfully blocked during the tournament cannot be fully repaired later. Real-time monitoring is the only way to prevent formal legality from masking practical suppression.

FIFA should also require monitoring of private security. Contractors may control access, search people, remove fans, restrict journalists, report incidents to police, and collect information. That role creates human rights exposure. Private security should be covered by written standards, training, reporting duties, and complaint procedures consistent with the UN Guiding Principles (United Nations, 2011).

7.3 Fast remedies

The third requirement is fast remedies. Ordinary legal remedies may be too slow for a tournament lasting only a few weeks. A person detained, deported, excluded from a stadium, stripped of accreditation, removed from a protest, or mistreated by police may win a legal argument months later. By then, the match, the report, the protest, the work opportunity, or the public moment is gone.

The remedy system must operate in real time. It should include emergency hotlines, legal referral networks, multilingual assistance, consular contact pathways, urgent escalation to host authorities, and clear procedures for accreditation disputes, detention alerts, police abuse, private security misconduct, and discriminatory exclusion.

Detention and removal threats require the fastest response. A detained fan, journalist, worker, or protester should have immediate access to interpretation, counsel, consular assistance, and judicial review. Removal should not proceed before a meaningful review where there are credible claims of arbitrary detention, discrimination, family separation, risk of serious harm, or denial of basic procedural safeguards.

Accreditation disputes also need urgent channels. A journalist who loses accreditation during the tournament may lose the ability to report on the event. A rights monitor denied access may lose the ability to document abuse. A worker removed from a controlled site may lose income and evidence. FIFA should create an independent appeal route for accreditation and access decisions, with rapid decisions and written reasons.

Police abuse and private security misconduct need a separate reporting route. Victims should not be forced to complain only to the same authority involved in the incident. Complaints should be capable of independent review, and urgent risks should trigger immediate protective action. The system should also collect data on patterns, including race, nationality, language, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, and location, where lawful and safe to do so.

A strong compliance model would publish anonymised data during and after the tournament. The public should know how many complaints were filed, what types of violations were alleged, how quickly cases were handled, and what corrective action was taken. Without reporting, the remedy becomes invisible. Without speed, remedy becomes symbolic.

Also read

• The Right to Protest in International Law

• Human Rights and the Global Digital Surveillance Infrastructure

• What Are Human Rights?

• The Principle of Non-Refoulement

• What Is a Refugee?

• Gender Equality and International Human Rights Law

• State Responsibility in International Law

• Principles Of Jurisdiction In International Law

Conclusion

The 2026 World Cup will test if mega-event human rights commitments are real or decorative. FIFA and the host authorities can describe the tournament as inclusive, global, and safe, but those words will have little value if fans, migrants, workers, journalists, protesters, and local communities experience the event through fear, profiling, exclusion, surveillance, or weak remedies.

The legal question is not if the United States may secure its borders. It may. Canada and Mexico may also enforce entry rules and protect public order. FIFA may regulate stadium safety. The question is how these powers are used, against whom, with what safeguards, and with what consequences for equality, expression, due process, privacy, and freedom from fear.

The United States dominates the risk because most matches will be played there, and because immigration enforcement has become the sharpest human rights pressure point of the tournament. If ICE activity, border discretion, travel restrictions, protest policing, and surveillance make people afraid to attend, report, work, gather, or be visible, the harm will not be limited to individual cases. It will reshape public participation in the tournament.

The strongest compliance response is also the clearest one: public guarantees, independent monitoring, and fast remedies. Host authorities should define the limits of immigration enforcement around World Cup spaces. FIFA should use its leverage to secure enforceable safeguards. Independent observers should monitor venues, fan zones, protest areas, and detention-related incidents. Urgent channels should exist for detention, removal threats, accreditation disputes, police abuse, private security misconduct, and discriminatory exclusion.

A World Cup cannot credibly celebrate global unity while allowing fear to decide who can enter public space. It cannot promote inclusion while supporters from certain countries face broad exclusion, while migrants avoid fan zones, while journalists hesitate to report, while LGBTQI+ fans reduce visibility, or while protest is pushed out of sight. Human rights protection is not the opposite of security. It is the legal condition that keeps security from becoming arbitrary power.

The 2026 tournament will reveal the difference between rights as branding and rights as governance. Branding uses slogans. Governance creates limits, monitors conduct, protects the vulnerable, and fixes harm quickly. If FIFA and the host states fail that test, the legacy of the tournament will not be only sporting. It will show how easily human rights promises collapse when border control, public security, and commercial reputation are allowed to operate without serious legal restraint.

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