RACHAEL THOMP­SON-KING

rachael.king @guardian.co.tt

Con­front­ed by the nu­mer­ous ills fac­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sports, a Task Force chaired by T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis was es­tab­lished by the Sports In­tegri­ty Glob­al Al­liance (SIGA) and ear­li­er this week, the group re­vealed its rec­om­men­da­tions to com­bat the rag­ing is­sues.

This fol­lowed a week-long on­line "Sports In­tegri­ty sem­i­nar host­ed by SIGA, where open and hon­est con­ver­sa­tions were held among some of the no­table peo­ple in sports. The in­tense event closed on Fri­day and the coun­cil unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved the set of rec­om­men­da­tions on race, gen­der, di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion in sport.

The rec­om­men­da­tions of the Task Force com­posed of sports ex­ec­u­tives, thought lead­ers and ath­letes from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and vary­ing parts of the world, were bro­ken down in­to four main ar­eas: 1 Re­search and Ev­i­dence Base; 2 Amend­ments to 3.3 of the SIGA Uni­ver­sal Stan­dards on Good Gov­er­nance; 3 De­vel­op­ment of a Toolk­it for Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tions to fa­cil­i­tate the im­ple­men­ta­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions in this area; and 4 Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and En­gage­ment of Com­mer­cial Part­ners and Fund­ing Mech­a­nism.

"The work of the task force and the rec­om­men­da­tions are a start point," said Lewis on Wednes­day. "Race and gen­der re­la­tions in sport are a mi­cro­cosm of so­ci­ety. It is a thorny is­sue with deep-seat­ed com­plex­i­ties."

Ac­cord­ing to the SIGA coun­cil, the amend­ments, that are to be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to this year's edi­tion of the SIGA Uni­ver­sal Stan­dards, in­clude the bold step of set­ting a new “Gold Stan­dard” for sports or­gan­i­sa­tions to achieve tar­gets for gen­der and race di­ver­si­ty in the board room, on an in­cre­men­tal ba­sis, for ex­am­ple, a grad­ual per­cent­age, year one, 25 per cent, year two, 35 per cent, year three, 50 per cent.

Oth­er pro­pos­als al­so in­clud­ed specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­enc­ing dis­abil­i­ty in its "Uni­ver­sal Stan­dards", as well as al­so mak­ing it a “Gold Stan­dard” for all em­ploy­ees at sports or­gan­i­sa­tions to re­ceive un­con­scious bias train­ing to in­stall a cul­ture of di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion through­out the gov­er­nance struc­ture of a sports or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Lewis said:"I be­lieve that a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach is im­por­tant. SIGA com­mit­ment is res­olute. The re­al­i­ty of dis­crim­i­na­tion be it race and gen­der and all forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion is un­de­ni­able.

"Cul­tur­al and re­li­gious val­ues con­tribute both as a plus and mi­nus in cer­tain coun­tries. Peo­ple try to char­ac­terise it as po­lit­i­cal or sport but it's about hu­man rights."

For these guide­lines to yield pos­i­tive re­sults, Lewis is adamant that it re­quires a com­mit­ment from all par­ties, hon­est­ly de­clar­ing: "It's not go­ing to be easy."

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis, SIGA has to work along­side the re­spec­tive in­ter­na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions; look at con­sti­tu­tions, poli­cies etc and where there are gaps high­light them and work to­geth­er in cre­at­ing change.

"We have to con­tin­ue press­ing for cul­tur­al change and re­form," said the head of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (CANOC).

The fo­cus of the Task Force was on in­ter­na­tion­al sport with the aim of it hav­ing a trick­le-down ef­fect from in­ter­na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions, which con­trol Na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tions and Con­ti­nen­tal Fed­er­a­tions, down to clubs and in­di­vid­u­als.

By no means the Task Force en­tered this ven­ture blind­ly and in its re­search found that there is a need for an in­crease of vis­i­ble da­ta on Black Asian and Mi­nor­i­ty Eth­nic (BAME) par­tic­i­pa­tion and lead­er­ship in in­ter­na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions.

Al­so in its find­ings, SIGA sur­vey or re­search project that fo­cused on the is­sue of racism and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and in­equal­i­ties across in­ter­na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions, iden­ti­fied that race is cur­rent­ly not a cri­te­ria un­der As­so­ci­a­tion of Sum­mer Olympic In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tions (ASOIF) self-as­sess­ment al­though gen­der is ad­dressed.

To elim­i­nate the pit­falls with­in in sports, SIGA has com­mit­ted to con­tin­ue to raise aware­ness and be a uni­fy­ing uni­ver­sal voice on these is­sues.

"It will take per­sis­tence and per­se­ver­ance. SIGA has to stay the course," said Lewis.

The Task Force rec­om­mend­ed which lev­el some of the amend­ments to the SIGA Uni­ver­sal Stan­dards as set out be­low:

BRONZE

Sports or­gan­i­sa­tion to have a mech­a­nism in place for staff and oth­er rel­e­vant per­son­nel (in­clud­ing mem­bers and vol­un­teers) to pro­vide anony­mous feed­back, such as an an­nu­al sur­vey, there­by fa­cil­i­tat­ing in­clu­sion and al­low­ing all voic­es to be heard.

SIL­VER

Sports or­gan­i­sa­tion to have a qual­i­ty man­age­ment process in place where­by their di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion poli­cies and prac­tices are reg­u­lar­ly re­viewed to make sure they are cur­rent, ap­pro­pri­ate and in line with any new leg­is­la­tion.

Sports or­gan­i­sa­tion to have a ro­bust sys­tem in place for han­dling and deal­ing with all dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaints. There needs to be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­lowed up by ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion if nec­es­sary.

GOLD

Sports or­gan­i­sa­tions to put all their em­ploy­ees through EDI/un­con­scious bias train­ing so that a cul­ture of di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion is fil­tered down through the or­gan­i­sa­tion from the top to bot­tom.

Sports or­gan­i­sa­tion to pro­cure re­cruit­ment firm with spe­cialised in di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion.

Each or­gan­i­sa­tion shall:

a) Adopt a tar­get of, and take all ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tions to en­cour­age, a min­i­mum of 30 per cent of each gen­der on its Board

b) Demon­strate a strong and pub­lic com­mit­ment to pro­gress­ing to­wards achiev­ing gen­der par­i­ty and greater di­ver­si­ty gen­er­al­ly on its Board, in­clud­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, Black, Asian, mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic (BAME) di­ver­si­ty, and dis­abil­i­ty.