A/HRC/44/26 would be jurisdictionally limited, as it would not be capable of suspending the regulations of a sport governing body worldwide. 48. Athletes may also bring human rights claims to regional courts. The European Court of Human Rights for example, recently applied the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights) to the arbitral proceedings of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. In doing so, the European Court found that Court of Arbitration for Sport arbitration was not necessarily consensual, particularly when athletes had no choice but to accept the mandatory arbitration clause stipulated by their international federation if they wished to continue to pursue a professional career in their sport. 97 While in that case the majority of the European Court held that the procedures followed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport – except for the refusal to hold a public hearing – complied with the athletes’ right to a fair hearing, two judges dissented on the basis that the Court of Arbitration for Sport was not sufficiently independent from sport governing bodies to guarantee that right. The European Court’s jurisprudence includes a number of other decisions arising in the context of sport, 98 but none have involved alleged human rights violations against athletes by national or international sport governing bodies. Whether, and under what conditions, the European Court could exercise jurisdiction in such cases thus remains largely untested. 49. Additionally, the proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights often take a long time, during which an athlete’s relatively short career may come to an end, and the global sport system extends far beyond Europe, which again points to the risk of inconsistencies among jurisdictions in terms of protection and remediation for human rights violations in sport. 50. The foregoing gaps in human rights protection and remedy in sport have led to calls for global oversight in various forms, in other words for a “world sports governance agency” capable of monitoring good governance within the Olympic system and the world of professional and amateur sport99 or for an “international anti-discrimination in sport unit” to harmonize sport rules concerning inclusion and exclusion in order to combat discrimination in sport and to enforce sanctions for non-compliance.100 Action 4 in the Kazan Action Plan mentions the possibility of establishing a global observatory for women, sport, physical education and physical activity that would, among other things, promote investment in women’s and girls’ participation in sport, establish measures to address gender-based violence in sport and monitor and evaluate progress made on achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5 as it relates to sport. These suggestions all point to States’ obligations to ensure the protection of human rights in sport generally and the rights of women and girl athletes belonging to racial minorities in particular. VI. Conclusions and recommendations 51. While sport is often an instrument for promoting peace, development, solidarity and human rights,101 United Nations human rights experts and activists have also noted that sport is often characterized by inequality and discrimination within and across national borders.102 52. Despite the fact that some actions have been taken by international bodies, States and sporting bodies to respond to discrimination and to promote equal rights, the overall picture remains one of continuing, pervasive inequalities in women’s and girls’ access to sporting resources and activities at the local, national and transnational levels. 97 98 99 100 101 102 European Court of Human Rights, Mutu and Pechstein v. Switzerland, judgment of 4 February 2019, paras. 109–115. See www.echr.coe.int/Documents/FS_Sport_ENG.pdf. Sandro Arcioni, “The creation of an independent body for the control of governance in sport worldwide”, in Ethics and Governance in Sport, pp. 75–83. Seema Patel, Inclusion and Exclusion in Competitive Sport: Socio-legal and Regulatory Perspectives (Routledge, 2015), p. 173. See, for example, General Assembly resolution 70/1 and Human Rights Council resolution 24/1. John G. Ruggie, “‘For the game. For the world.’”. 13