A/HRC/31/74 Mr. Crosset stressed the need for partnerships and supported the fact that FIFA was intentionally taking preventive actions against racism. 156. The representative of the United States underlined that “sport and nondiscrimination” was an important topic, worthy of consideration. He requested comments on why Mr. Cohen mentioned that player-to-player incidents were not common in basketball, whereas Mr. Tomlinson mentioned that those incidents were common in football. He also noted that FIFA might seem slow to act in response to the issue of racism. 157. Mr. Dembowski and Mr. Tomlinson stated that in grassroots football there were more player-to-player incidents than in professional football, which likely accounted to a large degree for the difference in statistical evidence. 158. Mr. Dembowski noted that FIFA started working on the anti-discrimination programme in 2001 and that the programme took some time to implement as there were many countries that were slow in adapting, but there was a good policy basis that could be used. He stated that it would be helpful to have partners in the various football confederations, as often there was no counterpart interaction. 159. Ms. Wurbs stated that UEFA and FIFA were indeed late with tackling antidiscrimination because an early strategy was absent and FIFA had until recently relied on a negative approach, which has now been changed to a positive approach. 160. The representative of Tunisia stated that it was good to dedicate a day to this topic as sport reflected society, and inquired why the regime of sanctions that was applied when supporters threw objects (stones etc.) was not applied when it came to discrimination. Ms. Wurbs agreed with the representative of Tunisia in that racism should at least be sanctioned in the same way as throwing of objects. 161. The representative of Uruguay asked Mr. Dembowski how FIFA cooperated with referees, for example, what are referees trained to do when bananas were thrown into the pitch). He also asked how that issue would be dealt with in the context of the upcoming World Cup. Mr. Dembowski noted that the FIFA monitoring system should help referees to address discrimination. 162. The Chair-Rapporteur stated the topic was an issue for the Ad Committee and should remain a key priority for the Committee, and also suggested that it would be useful for each of the expert presentations to be posted on the Ad Hoc Committee webpage. G. Panel discussion to provide a comparative perspective on national, regional and subregional mechanisms 163. At its 11th meeting, on 21 July, a panel discussion to provide a comparative perspective on national, regional, and subregional mechanisms was held. At short notice, the scheduled speaker on the African Union human rights system which addresses racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Michelo Hansungule from the Centre for Human Rights and the University of Pretoria, was unable to attend the session in Geneva due to a travel constraint. Linda Ravo, Directorate Fundamental Rights and Union Citizenship at the European Commission and Lyal S. Sunga, Head of the Rule of Law Programme at the Hague Institute for Global Justice participated in the panel discussion. 164. During her presentation, Linda Ravo, Directorate Fundamental Rights and Union Citizenship at the European Commission, emphasized that preventing and combating racial discrimination and xenophobia is a top priority for the European Union. She said that a solid legal framework has been developed over the years to address racism, xenophobia and hate crimes at the European Union level, including the Race Equality Directive and the 47