The Sport Division sends you its best wishes for the end of the year. We look forward to continuing working in advancing and protecting human rights in and through sport in 2023.

We invite you to discover our Calendar of activities 2023, and to already pencil in your agendas the relevant dates. In the meantime, some key moments in the year 2022 :

Sport Conventions

• Our Conventions welcomed new members and ratifications: the Saint-Denis Convention welcomed ratifications by Iceland, Finland and the Slovak Republic and the Macolin Convention welcomed signatures and a ratification by Iceland, North Macedonia and the Republic of Türkiye. We look forward to continuing co-operating at intergovernmental level on sport policy issues with all State Parties. 
• The Monitoring Group of the Anti-Doping Convention (T-DO) carried out  Evaluation visits to Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Sweden and adopted evaluation reports for previous visits to Italy, the Netherlands and Russia. Reports for the 2022 visits will be submitted for adoption in 2023.
• The Combating Hate Speech in Sport project was launched, aiming to explore innovative approaches to addressing hate speech, notably online, in the field of sport. 
• Since its launch in May, #SportSpreadsRespect progressed mapping the state of play of hate speech in sport in France, Greece and Spain and welcomed Olympic medallist and sport legend Ioannis Melissanidis onboard.
• The Macolin weeks in Spring and Autumn welcomed a myriad of events, bringing together the Follow-Up Committee of the Macolin Convention and its Advisory Group, the Group of Copenhagen, and closing the Football Local Alerts Global Strategy (FLAGS) project. 
• The “Sports Competitions Manipulation in the digital era: better addressing it together” conference, first of the Macolin Community conferences, focused on the recent trends in the field of sports competitions manipulation with a particular focus on social media platforms. “The essential role of prosecutors in protecting the integrity of sport” conference focused on raising awareness on the latest trends threatening sports integrity with a focus on the manipulation of sports competitions.
• The Committee of Ministers adopted the Recommendation on fair procedure applicable to anti-doping proceedings in sport, which aims at ensuring that the essential safeguards of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights fully apply to anti-doping proceedings.
• The Saint-Denis Committee adopted two new Recommendations on a Model structure of a national strategy  and a Model national legislative and regulatory framework on safety, security and service at football matches and other sports events.
• The Monitoring Group of the Anti-Doping Convention adopted the Recommendation on the protection of whistleblowers in the context of the fight against doping, which aims at reaffirming Council of Europe principles on the protection of whistleblowers and at adapting them to the sport and anti-doping reality.

Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS)

• EPAS welcomed two new member states: Canada and the Slovak Republic. We are looking forward to forthcoming joint activities and to co-operating at intergovernmental level on sport  policy issues with all member states. 
• EPAS celebrated its 15^th anniversary, bringing together the GB, the Consultative Committee (CC), the Council of Europe representatives and permanent representatives of EPAS member states to celebrate this milestone. Remembering Ambassador Rémi Mortier, Chair of the EPAS Statutory Committee, who was with us on this occasion, the Secretariat has been extremely saddened by his loss.
• During the 17^th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Sport, the Ministers adopted resolutions, affirming the right to sport for all and promoting sport as trailblazer for a healthy and sustainable future. 
• The Child Safeguarding in Sport (CSiS) project came to an end, succeeding in the development of country-specific roadmaps for child safeguarding in sport policies, the set-up of the Online Resource Centre on child safeguarding in sport, and the establishment of the Pool of international experts on safe sport, which held its first annual meeting on 6 December to define its goals, deliverables and the working plan for 2023-2024. This work goes ahead in the context of Start to Talk.
• The second and third in a series of three online meetings on the Mapping of Sports Facilities, organised jointly by EPAS and Mulier Instituut, were dedicated to sustainability and financial investments in relation to sports facilities and infrastructure. We would like to thank those member states which designated experts to participate in these meetings. Please consult this webpage for further information. 
• The Forum on Sport and Human Rights focused on freedom of expression of athletes and the press, gender equality in media and hate speech in sport, addressing challenges in these areas and solutions for moving forward. 
• EPAS held a round table on “Child participation in child safeguarding policymaking” to identify ways of effective inclusion of children’s voices, and the “Breakfast Roundtable: Women in Sport” to discuss steps to be taken to improve women’s position in sport. In addition, EPAS CC hosted a webinar “Physical education and school sports: a creative approach to Human rights and democracy” to address the relevance of school sport and physical education as a tool for promoting human rights and democracy. 
• We would also like to highlight the outstanding results of the IPACS Task Force 3 work and the finalisation of the Sport Governance Benchmark and its guidelines. We will continue these efforts in 2023 as well.