FIFA Fights Racism in a Three-Step Procedure

CAIRO – 16 June 2017: FIFA announced new measures aimed to prevent and respond to racist actions that may occur in the upcoming Confederations Cup on Wednesday.

Referees and game officials will now have authority to stop, suspend or call off matches for any discriminatory behavior by fans at the June 17 to July 2 event, according to BBC.

Taking

recommendations

from FIFA’s anti-racism taskforce, which was disbanded by FIFA in late 2016, the organization will employ anti-discrimination observers at all matches. As explained by their statement to BBC, these people will proctor matches and communicate with security officials during a match in order to prevent any racist actions from happening.

This change in procedure takes a proactive approach to addressing the incidents of racism and discrimination, versus the previous method of backward investigating and regulating after games have been played.

This “three-step procedure” comes just two days before matches begin in St. Petersburg, Russia. Racism and discrimination, mainly towards black players, is not new for Russia as FIFA called the level of racism in games in Russia “

unacceptable

,” according to BBC.

Country teams at play for the Confederations Cup in Group A include: Russia (host from Europe), New Zealand (Representative of Oceania), Portugal (Winner of the Euro) and Mexico (Representative of North America).

Group B teams playing at the Russia held event include: Cameroon (Winner of the African Cup of Nations), Australia (Representative of Asia), Chile (Representative of South America) and Germany (World Cup Winners).

It is hoped that the shift in stronger anti-discrimination measures for FIFA gets appropriate traction with the high profile event to begin Saturday.