Prince Feisal of Jordan on IOC presidency bid: ‘Sport can play a positive role in rebuilding societies’

The International Olympic Committee is one of the foremost governing bodies in the world of sport. Whoever holds the presidency wields significant power.

Elections are just a few weeks away, with a total of seven candidates in the running to take over from Thomas Bach, who will step down after 12 years at the helm.

No Asian has held the position despite it representing the largest continent on earth, accounting for around 60 per cent of the global population. Only Europeans and one American have ever presided over the committee.

Prince Feisal Al Hussein aims to change that. One of the two Asian candidates bidding for the IOC presidency, the Jordanian royal believes that he is best placed to lead the Olympic Movement into a new era.

"We are a global organisation; we represent the world. We have 206 Olympic committees from five continents. I think this is a great opportunity to have that global representation at the very top," Prince Feisal told The National in a Zoom interview.

Prince Feisal, son of King Hussein and Princess Muna of Jordan and younger brother of King Abdullah, is running alongside an impressive list of candidates, including double Olympic Champion Lord Sebastian Coe - the president of World Athletics - and Johan Eliasch, president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation.

However, Prince Feisal believes his experience, work ethic and values will stand him in good stead when members cast their votes at the 144th IOC Session running from March 18-21.

"My father instilled in us a sense of service, whether it's service to the nation, to the country when I was in the military, or to the global environment. And sports is a natural extension of what I've been brought up with. To run for the presidency is something that I see is just a continuation of my lifetime in dedication to service."

An IOC member since 2010 and elected to the IOC Executive Board in 2019, Prince Feisal is president of the Jordanian Olympic Committee (JOC) and founder of Generations For Peace (GFP), a Jordanian non-government organisation dedicated to peacebuilding through sustainable conflict transformation at the grassroots.

"Coming from a small NOC [National Olympic Committee], I appreciate the type of challenges that smaller countries have in trying to push sports as an agenda at the national level. And the challenges we have, facing day-to-day issues, funding support, getting things off the ground," Prince Feisal said.

Inspiring imagination, ensuring integrity and inclusion are the three core principles of the manifesto Prince Feisal presented to the committee in January.

Israel-Palestine and the issue of sanctions

As the only candidate from the Arab world and at a time of great political strife, the question of Israel and Palestine is difficult to evade.

The IOC, in particular, has faced accusations of double standards over its decision to not sanction Israel the same way it did Russia and Belarus.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, the IOC recommended that Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials not be permitted to participate in sporting events "to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants".

At the Paris 2024 Olympics, Russian and Belarusian athletes were only allowed to compete as Individual Neutral Athletes, and only if they met certain criteria and had not previously endorsed the war.

However, last year the IOC rejected calls from the Palestinian Olympic Committee to ban Israeli athletes from the Summer Games. The Palestinian NOC claims that approximately 400 Palestinian athletes have been killed since October 7, 2023 – the date Hamas launched an attack on Israel – with much of their sporting infrastructure destroyed.

Asked about how decisions are currently being made by the IOC with regards to geopolitical issues, Prince Feisal said: "I think what should govern our decision-making in these situations is the Olympic Charter. Where there are clear violations of the Olympic Charter then I think countries will face the potential of sanctions.

"Where we have not been able to see any clear violations of the Olympic Charter, then we have to be sympathetic. What has happened in Gaza has been nothing short of tragic. The level of destruction and so on, and I can understand how people can't differentiate between what happened in Gaza and what happened in Ukraine.

"I'm very sympathetic to the global feelings. We are a global institution. And one of the challenges that we face is that the youth around the world have given up or have lost faith in global institutions. So we need to regain their trust and we need to regain the relevance of sports as a powerful tool for unity of bringing people together, of healing.

"I think there's so much that sports can do. It can't solve the world's problems. And I would be naive if I thought it could. I think the reality is that we can't do that. But we can play a positive role in rebuilding societies, in rebuilding the issue of hope."

Prince Feisal said it was important to follow IOC laws governing the complex issue of sanctions.

"We have to be sympathetic, but we also have to stick to our charter and to our values and to our ideals.

"We don't want people, or the political world, to decide who is and who is not a bad actor."

When pressed about IOC’s decision making with regards to Israel and their potential transgressions of the Olympic Charter, Prince Feisal highlighted the relationship his country has with Palestine.

“We are neighbours; a large percentage of our population are of Palestinian origins," Prince Feisal said.

"I totally understand. I totally comprehend the feeling. The issue, I think, is more of a technical and legal issue, which is a question of whether there was a violation of the Olympic Charter."

As for Russia’s exclusion, he added: "Would I like to bring them back? I would like to bring them back because the Olympic Movement is global, not exclusivity. But they have to comply with the Olympic Charter."

Prince Feisal is aware that the IOC faces many challenges as it attempts to navigate a highly politicised world. And while many candidates running to be the next body's president have remained evasive on divisive issues, the only Arab candidate is more candid.

"Look, politics exists, it's part of being human. It exists whether you have family politics, you have office politics, you have local politics, regional, international politics," he added.

"So to sit there and say that we are going to completely exclude politics from sports would be a lovely thing to say, but it's not practical. The challenge is to have the experience to be able to effectively navigate a very complex and difficult global political situation while staying true to the Olympic ideals and Olympic values."

Climate change

Navigating a complex global political situation is only one of the challenges facing IOC presidential hopefuls. The other major issue is climate change.

"Climate change is here, we are seeing it," Prince Feisal points out. "Even if you're looking in Europe, traditional cities like Madrid, Rome, Athens would not be in a position to be able to bid for Olympic Games because of the concerns about heat.

"We saw that even in Paris. We saw that in Tokyo. So less and less countries are capable of safely hosting Olympic Games, whether it's summer or winter because of climate change."

Prince Feisal proposes allowing for greater flexibility when it comes to the Olympic calendar.

"I think hosting is a dream for a lot of countries. The ability to bring the world there to showcase what they can do - the importance of sports at a national level as well as an international level. And I think we need to open it up as much as we can to allow more countries who have that aspiration to be able to bid."

So how receptive would the Jordanian candidate be to allowing countries in the Gulf or any other nation with a challenging climate, the opportunity to host the Olympics?

"Again the two issues: One is the concern about sustainability. Is this something that is sustainable, both from an environmental perspective as well as from a financial perspective making these types of investments? But why should we limit ourselves to where we can host the Games? If there is flexibility in the system, why should we exclude countries, regions in the world from being able to host the Games?"

Noting the success of Qatar when it came to hosting the Fifa World Cup in 2022 and how well it was received, he believes the likes of Saudi Arabia, who won the right to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, are capable of hosting Olympic Games.

Prince Feisal says this will require a lot of planning and calendar flexibility, potentially staging the Games at different times of the year, if it can be agreed upon by the different international federations.

"We talk in the Olympic Movement about universality, and we need to be able to live up to that dream."

Gender issue

Paris 2024 may have provoked concerns about heat, but they were the first Olympic Games to achieve gender parity. However, issues around gender eligibility remain. Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting faced immense media scrutiny and courted controversy as they competed on the world stage.

Both were registered as female at birth but were excluded from the International Boxing Association's 2023 World Championships after that organisation claimed they failed gender eligibility tests.

The IBA had lost its Olympic recognition due to governance issues, paving the way for the IOC to take control of boxing, allowing Khelif and Lin to compete as females. Both went on to win gold medals.

Prince Feisal echoed outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach’s words that it's "not for the IOC to decide who is a man or who is a woman."

When it comes to current eligibility rules, the Olympics website states "as with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport".

Prince Feisal is happy to continue to defer to the international federations when it comes to governing their respective sports. "I think we want to have a level playing field," explained the Jordanian royal.

"But beyond that, what worried me as a person who has worked for over a decade now on the issue of safeguarding, is the amount of abuse and attacks that both of these women had to face as a result of an accusation that was put out about them.

"And that's not right in my opinion. And we need to, as an Olympic Movement, protect all athletes from that type of abuse and that type of scrutiny."

Algerian Olympic medallist Imane Khelif given rapturous welcome home

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Prince Feisal has been a leader in efforts to protect athletes. In 2014, he was appointed chair of the new IOC Prevention of Harassment and Abuse in Sport Working Group and in 2017 launched the IOC toolkit for safeguarding athletes.

The toolkit aims to provide solutions and guidance for sporting organisations based on experience and expertise from all over the world.

However, at the Paris Olympics, the Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee filed an official complaint with the IOC to protest the online harassment of Khelif.

So, how does the IOC better safeguard athletes from harassment and cyberbullying?

"We were trying to introduce a new system that would be able to identify and to be able to screen to protect athletes from potential abusive comments," Prince Feisal explained.

Prince Feisal was referring to the AI-powered monitoring service that sought to protect athletes and officials from online abuse at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games last summer.

As the Olympic organisation outlined, "the AI-powered system will monitor thousands of accounts on all major social media platforms and in 35+ languages in real time. Any identified threats will be flagged, so that abusive messages can be dealt with effectively by the relevant social media platforms – in many cases before the athlete has even had the chance to see the abuse".

Prince Feisal felt that the system was successful in some ways but that the technology will improve allowing for more protection of athletes.

"It's our responsibility in the Olympic Movement to protect all athletes from all type of harassment and abuse. That's been the principle of safeguarding and that's part of the integrity of sports.”