Andrew is enjoying a break this week. I’m Jan Kooy, taking care of the Daily Brief today.
After the human rights disaster that was last year’s men’s football World Cup in Qatar, a new scandal is making headlines, even though you may not have heard of the main protagonist, Yves Jean-Bart.
This former Haiti Football Federation president has just received some news that is good for him, and very bad for his victims.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has annulled the lifetime ban and other sanctions that world football federation FIFA placed on Jean-Bart over a sexual abuse scandal.
FIFA first suspended Jean-Bart and a number of his vice presidents and staff in May 2020. Half a year later it banned Jean-Bart for life following investigations, including by the athlete players’ union FIFPro, which documented at least 34 alleged victims. Among them were children at the national football training center. Ten possible abusers, including Jean-Bart, were implicated.
Human Rights Watch and the Army of Survivors say that FIFA should appeal the CAS decision and put new measures in place to protect witnesses in sexual abuse cases in Haiti and globally.
“In Haiti, FIFA and the sport of football gave Yves Jean-Bart enormous power, including to abuse child athletes, and cover up his abuses with threats to kill survivors and family members,” says my colleague Minky Worden, HRW’s director of global initiatives. “In its hearing, CAS failed to provide basic witness protection, despite knowing that many athletes and federation staff had received death threats.”
Jean-Bart oversaw Haiti’s national football federation and “FIFA GOAL training center,” the Centre Technique National in Croix-des-Bouquets, also known as “The Ranch,” where promising child athletes as young as 12 trained.
Over the last three years, dozens of whistleblowers, witnesses, and survivors have contacted FIFA, the Guardian (UK-based newspaper), HRW, FIFPro and the Haitian authorities to investigate serious allegations of sexual assault against Jean-Bart.