Just two weeks ahead of the first 2026 World Cup match, Vancouver released its final FIFA Human Rights Action Plan. The Plan, dated May 25, 2026, updated a February draft that Pivot and a coalition of allied organizations had heavily criticized. Though the final Plan reflects some meager improvements, it offers far too little far too late – and ultimately fails to set out a robust legal and policy framework sufficient to mitigate the human rights implications of hosting the 2026 World Cup.

Toronto, the other Canadian city playing host to the 2026 Games, also recently released its own Human Rights Plan. Though local contexts differ, the release of Toronto’s Plan offers an opportunity to ask: how much of the weakness of the Vancouver Plan is unique, and how much is baked into FIFA’s human rights requirements from the beginning?

This is Part 2 of Pivot’s FIFA on the Block Series. We take a deep dive into FIFA’s Human Rights Framework, revealing the chasm between what 2026 host city action plans purport to do and what they mean in practice.

Photo by: Fatima Jaffer (@fatsjaffer)

FIFA’s Attempts to Rehab its Reputation on Human Rights

FIFA is infamously associated with human rights atrocities the world over. Migrant workers hired to build FIFA stadiums in Qatar in 2022 reported dangerous living and working conditions, unpaid wages, and injuries – and many ultimately died throughout the process. Three years later, FIFA opted to cancel pre-planned anti-racism and anti-discrimination messaging during the 2025 Club World Cup hosted in the US, and homophobic chants were reported at at least one match.

In an attempt to rehabilitate its reputation on human rights, FIFA introduced the World Cup 2026 Human Rights Framework. The Framework introduced, for the first time ever, a requirement that each of the 16 World Cup host cities develop tailored “Host City Human Rights Action Plans,” which must in turn address three themes: inclusion and safeguarding; workers’ rights; and access to remedy. Cities are to address specific human rights issues (20 in total) that fall under each theme, and set out targeted, specific legal and policy measures to mitigate those issues in the context of hosting the World Cup. Each Plan is to be informed by domestic law (in Vancouver’s case, municipal, provincial, and federal law), as well as international human rights standards.

FIFA’s June 2024 announcement of its new rights-planning process for World Cup 2026 host cities appeared promising. Host cities would be obligated to undertake a robust, years-long planning process to identify and then prevent the human rights impacts of the Games. They would have to harness local expertise by consulting with non-governmental stakeholders and community groups. Crucially, host cities would be forced to be proactive, leveraging existing law and policy and allocating resources (within their large event budgets) to fill gaps in human rights planning and response. FIFA, it seemed, was taking the potential impacts of the 2026 World Cup seriously, laying the groundwork for host cities to implement concrete rights-protections as a central part of their planning process.

Photo by: Fatima Jaffer (@fatsjaffer)

Vancouver’s Draft Plan: February 2026

Vancouver’s draft Human Rights Plan, however, cast early doubt on the promise of FIFA’s new requirements. The draft was initially set to be released in December 2025, but its publication was delayed without explanation.

The draft Plan, finally released in February 2026, listed the 20 human rights issues that FIFA’s Framework enumerated. However, instead of introducing targeted legal and policy measures to mitigate those issues, Vancouver’s draft Plan set out a laundry list of already-existing city, provincial, and federal laws. The enumerated human rights measures represented the status quo, rather than targeted responses to FIFA’s potential impacts. The language throughout the Plan was weak and explicitly non-committal, outlining the City’s intention to “continue” or “monitor” existing processes, rather than to “implement”, “fund”, or “invest in” new ones.

In some sections, the draft Plan’s commitments were outright misleading. For example, in the section addressing steps to mitigate displacement for people who are unhoused, the Plan referenced existing provincial and municipal tenant protections, including BC’s Residential Tenancy Act and the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act. Neither of these laws, however, extend to protect people that rely on public space, who are not currently legally categorized as “tenants.” In other words, the Plan purported to assuage Vancouver residents’ fears of FIFA-related displacement by pointing to laws that don’t even apply to them.

Toronto, for its part, failed to release a draft Plan at all.

Vancouver’s Final Plan: May 2026

Displacement

The final version of Vancouver’s Plan, released at the end of May, is only marginally more robust than its predecessor. The final Plan still largely references extant legal and policy frameworks. In a positive step, the final Plan introduces the City’s approval of $500,000 in grants to front-line tenant advocates (including Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre (TRAC) and Access Pro Bono Society of BC), who will inevitably see surges in demand brought on by FIFA-induced housing displacement.

But the final Plan still falls glaringly short on preventing displacement for people who rely on public space. It promises that the City will maintain existing services for people experiencing homelessness and housing precarity, but does not commit to scaling up those services, nor to increase funding for non-governmental service providers. The Plan assures that people will still be able to shelter outdoors overnight – seemingly offering this as a concession, rather than a constitutionally protected right for residents of a city without adequate shelter spaces. In the same section on preventing displacement, the Plan explicitly cautions that the City’s ongoing “daily public realm management and by-law compliance work will continue” (euphemism for violent street sweeps and confiscations of personal belongings) – an ominous warning at a time of increased enforcement of new and existing bylaws.

Toronto’s Plan (released on June 1, 2026) goes even further, explicitly contemplating the displacement of people who rely on public space. Specifically, Toronto’s Plan states that encampments “present health and safety risks for both residents and for the public” and thereby commits to “continuing to prioritize outreach and rapid access to shelter spaces and supports to help reduce exposure to those risks." This is alarming in a Plan that is intended to prevent – rather than license – FIFA-related rights impacts.

Pushing people who are sheltering outside into hastily created shelter spaces flies in the face of their autonomy and self-determination - If cities really cared about the ‘health and safety’ of people sheltering outside, they would invest in housing -- rather than displacement to nowhere or a rapid, last-minute effort to push people inside to accommodate the Games.

Fiona York, an organizer with Ayx Community Bus in Vancouver

Daytime sheltering spaces

Vancouver’s final Plan announces the City’s commitment to extend programming at five City-operated daytime respite spaces on Match Days. While dignified, accessible daytime sheltering options has been one of DTES communities’ central demands, the commitments outlined in the Plan fall short.

According to the Plan, hours will only be extended on Match Days – in other words, a handful of days during a weeks-long period of FIFA-related disruption. Increased policing, bylaw enforcement, and road closures are expected throughout the entire event period (June 11-July 19). Extending programming on 7 out of those 39 days does little to effectively safeguard the privacy, dignity, and freedom of those who rely on public space while FIFA is in town. The City’s commitment seems to misdiagnose the harm as the soccer matches themselves, rather than the surveillance infrastructure that accompanies the broader spectacle.

The Plan also misses an opportunity to provide daytime sheltering options that double as cooling centres for people who rely on public space. Vancouver has experienced extreme heat during each of the past several summers, with the effects felt first and worst by DTES residents. Not only is the DTES an urban heat island, but much of the housing in the neighbourhood is ill-equipped with air conditioning, proper ventilation, and common areas – all of which mitigate climatic risk. Existing city-run cooling centres are notoriously inaccessible for people who are unhoused, who are seen as “squatting” in those spaces and are regularly discriminated against by staff and volunteers. In summer 2026, extreme heat, housing precarity, and FIFA-related disruptions are likely to combine to produce intersectional vulnerabilities that the Plan fails to address.

Photo by: Fatima Jaffer (@fatsjaffer)

Information on toxic drugs

For months, a coalition of DTES and Chinatown organizations, armed with the expertise of drug user-led groups, urged the City to take seriously the collision course of tourists and Vancouver’s toxic drug supply. BC has been in a declared Public Health Emergency from drug-related overdoses since 2016 – in other words, more than a decade.

After noting the glaring absence of toxic drug-related information in February’s draft Plan, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) provided the Host City Committee with targeted, actionable demands, including to:

• hire peer first responders for drug overdose around FIFA event sites;
• increase funding for safe consumption sites and overdose prevention sites; and
• create a visual resource for in-person services for drug users new to the City.

The final Plan’s section on toxic drugs, however, is relegated to a single paragraph at the bottom of the FAQ section (page 75 of a 78-page document). The section informs readers that BC’s drug supply is contaminated and encourages visitors to “avoid using drugs and, if using, to avoid using alone.” This statement flies in the face of the evidence-based harm reduction principles that VANDU and other groups have been urging the City to consider. Additional drug-user services and supports are excluded from the Plan entirely.

The Plan’s failings are especially stark in light of the BC Health Minister's announcement last month that Vancouver Coastal Health “will not proceed...at this time” with an OPS originally planned for 900 Helmcken Street (the only one outside of a hospital setting in the entire downtown core), citing public backlash. Presumably, this backlash included Mayor Sim’s own, very public opposition to the site.

The province and the city have not adequately prepared the people who are visiting Vancouver for the death-trap risk they are entering - It would be naïve to think that the people who are coming to this soccer tournament, there’s not going to be some drug users…And to not give them any kinds of heads-up about what’s been happening here for the last 10 years is criminal.

Dave Hamm, president of VANDU

Toronto’s Human Rights Plan fails to even mention the word “drugs” once, let alone introduce harm reduction measures. This is more than a shortcoming, but rather a decision with deadly consequences for tourists and residents alike.

Access to remedy

Both Vancouver and Toronto’s Plans fail to introduce adequate access to remedy channels for people who experience FIFA-related human rights violations.

Vancouver’s Plan relies on existing grievance mechanisms, rather than introducing a robust, targeted channel for people to report FIFA-related human rights violations. FIFA only has jurisdiction to respond to human rights violations that occur within an official event venue. In those instances, people are to file a report through FIFA’s app, and FIFA staff will assess the complaint and investigate if appropriate.

But if a human rights violation occurs anywhere else in the city throughout the event period, FIFA’s internal reporting channels don’t apply. In those instances, Vancouver’s Plan encourages people to report violations through 311 – an existing service operated by the City of Vancouver that is notoriously underfunded and inaccessible, especially for people without reliable access to technology. Moreover, the Plan sidesteps critical procedural fairness details, including: what criteria will be used to assess reports of violations submitted through 311? What notice and evidence requirements apply? What standard of proof is to be used? Under what circumstances will an investigation occur? How will investigations proceed? And most crucially, what are the available remedies? Addressing these questions clearly and in advance is critical for ensuring a fair, accessible procedure, and yet the Plan answers none of them.

Without concrete, tangible efforts to invest in, scale up, and educate Vancouver residents about how to use the 311 reporting channel, people who experience FIFA-related human rights violations will be left without adequate remedy. Those violations, moreover, will remain undocumented and unaccounted for in the City’s future attempts to report on the legacy of the Games.

Toronto’s Plan similarly relies on existing reporting channels, including their own local 311 service. Unlike Vancouver’s Plan, which is silent on public legal education efforts, Toronto’s Plan commits to “provide information and resources on available reporting options through accessible channels, including City websites, volunteer training, public communications and FIFA’s reporting channel.” A meaningful education campaign on how to report FIFA-related human rights violations, however, should have been mapped out months ago – not in a document released nine days before the start of the Games.

A “requirement” that doesn’t require much at all

While Vancouver’s Human Rights Plan is weak and Toronto’s is arguably weaker, some of the 2026 host cities have not released a plan at all. The language of FIFA’s Human Rights Framework purports to require these Plans, stipulating that each city “will” release a tailored Plan in advance of the Games (as opposed to “may” or “might” release). Despite this supposedly mandatory obligation, FIFA’s Framework does not set out a process for sanctioning cities that fail to publish a Plan, nor for instructing cities with inadequate Plans to improve them. Ultimately, FIFA has no power to compel cities to implement legal and policy measures to protect against the human rights impacts that the 2026 World Cup brings.

Perhaps the meaninglessness of FIFA’s Human Rights Framework should not come as a surprise: one does wonder how an organization that awarded Donald Trump the Peace Prize could have ever served as a genuine stalwart for human rights protection. Or perhaps no planning process, no matter how rigorous, could meaningfully prevent the human rights consequences that have so far proven to be baked into the modern mega sporting event.

[We haven’t] seen a mega event that can ‘plan’ away the federal violence inherent in settler colony spectacles.

Eric Sheehan, an organizer with NOlympics LA22

But critiquing the Plans released by the Canadian host cities remains an important exercise. Vancouver and Toronto cannot receive free passes simply for publishing Human Rights Plans, when those Plans do little to meaningfully offset the rights-impacts they themselves have invited by hosting the Games.

[We must] absolutely disallow any level of government or sport organization from using these plans as a way to 'rights-wash' the negative impacts the World Cup has on host cities and the people who live in them.

Chantelle Spicer, Co-Director of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition

Here at home, Vancouver’s Plan offers us tangible documentation of what the City is and is not doing to mitigate FIFA-related harms, and a benchmark from which to demand something better. The Plan shows us, on paper, that at a moment when the City is spending up to $338 million to host the FIFA Games, it is choosing not to invest in harm reduction initiatives, daytime sheltering spaces, or accessible reporting channels. The Plan saves us from having to guess the City’s priorities – it makes them explicit.