By Lisa van Vliet —
Étudiante en Master of Law, orientation droit du sport, à l’Université de Neuchâtel (Suisse).
Let’s be honest: when we think of sport, we think of excellence, competition, and emotion, not of trauma, silence, and fear. And yet, for many athletes, sport is not always the safe space it should be.
That is the reality that Women in sports law (WISLaw[1]) chose to debate in one of its recent conferences. The network, founded in 2016, brings together women working in sports law around the globe. Through multiple events, it encourages professional collaboration and promotes gender equality within the legal and sports communities. On Monday 28 July 2025, an event entitled the “Serving Up Safe Sport Challenges” was held where the spotlight was placed on one critical topic: safeguarding in sport. The round table event was an opportunity for various legal practitioners who work in the safeguarding field to discuss challenges they face, learn from each other and raise ongoing issue the sports law community needs to address to ensure its evolving processes are fair and balanced.
The Meaning of Safeguarding
Safeguarding, in a sporting context, is about much more than disciplinary rules. “[It]refers to all measures to prevent violence, harassment, or abuse to children or adults in sport and all recognition, reporting, response, and remedy activities undertaken to respond to actual or potential abuse or harmful behaviour. It means ensuring that sport is a space of respect, fairness, and safety — for everyone.”[2] It is about creating mechanisms that allow complaints to be heard and handled, without requiring athletes to navigate through the formal justice system.
Fundamentally, safeguarding aims to relieve athletes from the emotional and procedural burden of speaking out. Indeed, safeguarding provides them with support systems designed to minimize trauma and promote healing.[3]
During the conference, one message stood out: sport is not just a performance arena, it is a place of values. Fairness, well-being, and dignity are not simply side notes. They are the foundation. And ensuring safety is not optional, it is what makes sport worthy of being a space we look up to.
The Common Thread of Sanctioning without Criminalising
One of the first dilemmas addressed was deceptively simple: What should the outcome of a safeguarding procedure look like?
It turns out the answer is anything but obvious. Temporary suspensions are often necessary within safeguarding procedures to protect athletes and maintain a safe environment. However, applying these measures requires great caution to ensure the process does not become a parallel criminal tribunal. When the conduct under review is simultaneously subject to criminal investigation, the situation becomes even more complex, demanding a careful coordination between safeguarding bodies and the justice system. Most importantly, safeguarding procedures must strike a delicate balance: they need to protect the complainant effectively while respecting the rights of the accused. Achieving this balance means designing processes that are both fair and empathetic, ensuring that neither party is unjustly disadvantaged, and that the integrity of sport remains intact.
A major concern raised was the alarming effect of false allegation fears, and the very real possibility that complaints are never made at all. Indeed, when people are convinced that “nothing will happen”, they simply stop speaking up. The consequence is a failure to enforce sanctions or uphold the law, which undermines trust in the system and allows harmful behaviours to persist unchecked.
When the Harm Happens Outside the Field
Safeguarding becomes even more complex when abuse takes place outside the physical or legal boundaries of sport. Inappropriate behaviour that occurs off-site, during the off-season, or beyond the formal structures of a team or federation remains just as damaging yet often falls outside the scope of existing safeguard jurisdictions. These situations are further complicated when the individuals involved are not formally affiliated with a federation or bound by their rules but still operate within the sport’s ecosystem.
This grey zone reveals serious limitations in how misconduct is recognized and addressed when it falls outside formal structures. It becomes unclear who should intervene, how, and under which authority. As a result, safeguarding efforts risk stopping at the edge of official boundaries, even when the harm continues beyond them.
These cases highlight a major blind spot: jurisdictional limitations. Codes of conduct may exist but applying them beyond institutional borders is often complex. There is also a mental health dimension, especially as harm and abuse are often difficult to identify, process and report. Addressing such situations requires sensitivity, an understanding of context, and the ability to navigate grey areas where formal intervention may not always seem obvious or appropriate.
Discussion focused on the necessity to rethink how we define institutional responsibility and how far safeguarding can, and should, extend beyond traditional boundaries to address harm wherever it occurs.
Navigating Fragmented Frameworks
If safeguarding is already complex, it becomes even more so when jurisdiction is fragmented, and that is especially true in Canada.
While complaints at times go unfiled simply because athletes do not know where or how to report, a unified system by way of the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS) and Canadian Safe Sport Program (CSSP) (and formerly the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner or OSIC) is now helping. Interestingly, some participants noted that uniformity may not be the answer, and suggested the opposite: that sport-specific, local codes of conduct may be better suited to reflect each discipline’s culture, risks, and power dynamics.
There is also the thorny issue of external regulation. Many sporting institutions are suspicious of it, seeing it as a threat to their autonomy. But when internal processes are inconsistent and difficult to access, rejecting outside oversight can end up doing more harm than good. In practice, this resistance may leave serious issues unaddressed, not because they are invisible, but because no effective mechanism is in place to deal with them.
A final reflection is worth adding: the increasing legalisation of safeguarding can itself become a barrier. When procedures are wrapped in legal jargon or handled through overly formal and technical language, they risk alienating the very people they are meant to support. If safeguarding becomes too “legal”, it may no longer feel safe, but it will become inaccessible.
Whether through legal jargon or emotionally detached procedures, the result is the same: barriers to access.
What a Person-Centred Approach Looks Like
Throughout the discussion, one principle kept surfacing: Safeguarding isn’t about justice, it is about people. That means rethinking how we handle complaints, how we design our procedures, and how we speak about harm.
A safeguarding process must balance fairness with empathy, ensuring that those involved feel genuinely heard and respected. Transparency plays a crucial role, especially when it comes to protecting anonymity and building trust. As important is adopting a trauma-sensitive approach that carefully considers the emotional impact on individuals, attempting to avoid causing further harm or retraumatisation.
The Canadian Safe Sport Program (CSSP)[4] was raised as an example. On one hand, the existence of a public registry can serve as an incentive for the accused to fully engage with the safeguarding process, knowing that the consequences can extend beyond internal sanctions and impact their public reputation. On the other hand, it sends a clear message: safeguarding is not just a formality. It is a mechanism that leads to concrete, visible, and enforceable consequences.
Conclusion: Safeguarding is Trust, Not Just Policy
At the heart of the discussion was a simple but powerful idea: Safeguarding is not about replacing courts. It’s about creating structures of trust.
When done properly, safeguarding functions as an essential administrative process, one that complements, rather than replaces, legal or disciplinary mechanisms. Its role is not to deliver justice in the criminal sense, but to educate, prevent, recognize and deter abusive behaviours, and provide timely, structured responses to complaints that prioritise safety and well-being. As the WISLaw discussions showed, this requires more than written policies: it demands procedures that are accessible, coordinated across institutions, sensitive to mental health, and designed to prevent retraumatisation. It also means accepting that safeguarding is complex, recognising jurisdictional limits, resisting overly legalistic reflexes, and addressing harm even when it falls outside formal structures. In short, safeguarding only works when it reflects the messy, human realities of sport.
The WISLaw conference didn’t pretend safeguarding is easy. But it made one thing clear: if we care about the integrity of sport, we must start by listening to those who feel unsafe in it and having the fortitude to take away the privilege of participating in sport from those who maltreat others.
[2] Author Unknown, “What is Safeguarding in Sport?” (25 June 2025), online: <safesportinternational.com> [perma.cc/F2M4-7BH4].
[3] Bird & Bird Podcast, “Safeguarding – What Sport Needs to Know: Episode 1 – Partnering for Protection” (16 June 2025) at 08m:00, online (podcast): <soundcloud.com> [perma.cc/SR5X-NEDK].
[4] See <cces.ca/safesport>.
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