Human Rights in Youth Sport: A Critical Review

Child abuse, protection and welfare in sport have come to our attention over the past 10 to 15 years through a number of infamous cases such as Paul Hickson, former British swimming coach, jailed for sexual assaults on young swimmers over 20 years (Brackenridge, 2001) and Graham James, former Canadian professional ice hockey coach, convicted for sexual offences against boys in the game (Kirby et al., 2000). Such cases represent the ugliest side of sport when we want to believe that youth sport represents all that is best in life. A host of questions arise from children’s engagement in youth sports but the overarching question addressed here by Paulo David is ‘Can the integration of human rights in the sport system improve its quality, and the status of athletes, including its youngest ones? ’ (p. 262). Oddly, despite a large literature on youth sports, and sociological critiques from as long ago as 1979, when Rainer Martens and Vern Seefeldt launched their Bill of Rights for the Young Athlete, the human rights impli-cations per se of involving children in competitive sports have barely been examined before (an exception is Grenfell and Rinehart, 2003). The human rights of youn