United States: Trump administration denies people right to play and fails to protect women
Summary:
This is a statement by the Sport & Rights Alliance, kindly republished with their permission
(Amsterdam, February 7, 2025) – The Sport & Rights Alliance vehemently rejects the executive order signed by US President Donald Trump which aims at excluding trans, gender-diverse, and intersex people from competing in sports at all levels.
The right to play sports should be available to everyone, no matter their sex, gender or gender identity. This inhumane obsession with targeting trans people, including trans youth, is causing real harm to real people, and does nothing to protect women’s sport. What would help women athletes much more is creating serious policies to tackle abuse, harassment, pay inequity and lack of representation.
Andrea Florence, Director of the Sport & Rights Alliance
Under the false pretence of protecting women and girls, the Trump administration adopts language from anti-rights and anti-gender movements to limit participation in women’s sports, rescind funds from educational programs that refuse to comply, and push sporting and multilateral institutions to adopt its regressive policies. The Sport & Rights Alliance is particularly concerned at the language used in the executive order, which hatefully misgenders trans and intersex women.
As of now, an official document by the US government falsely claims that men are playing in women’s sports — unless we should assume that a country’s president is deliberately slandering a segment of US citizens in an executive order. Hate speech has no place anywhere, and even more so when coming from people in positions of responsibility and power.
Gurchaten Sandhu, Director of Programmes at ILGA World
Though to what extent the executive order will result in immediate bans remains to be seen, the directive addresses women’s sports at all levels, from educational settings to international competitions, and advocates for regressive policies up to the United Nations.
“One day after withdrawing from any participation in the Human Rights Council, President Trump officially states that his government will lobby the United Nations for ‘international rules and norms governing sports competition to protect a sex-based female sports category’,” continues Sandhu. “Multilateral spaces are not a playground for pick-and-choose games. One cannot just then use them, especially after undermining them.”
In particular, this executive order goes against the positions of United Nations experts, who have repeatedly called for the removal of policies that require women athletes to undergo unnecessary medical procedures to participate in sports. The Trump administration, on the other hand, claims that abusive preconditions — such as forcibly reducing natural levels of testosterone in an athlete’s body — do not go far enough and plans to force these outdated views up to the International Olympic Committee.
These stances, combined with yet another threat to withdraw funding as a wedge for reactionary policies, paint a worrying scenario. However, women and LGBTI movements worldwide are fighting back, together.
To trans, gender-diverse, and intersex persons, and to all women, we simply say: from the elite athlete level to the community level, where the majority of participation in sports lies, we continue to advocate for everyone’s human rights to play free from discrimination and abuse. You are not alone.
Joanna Maranhão, Network Coordinator at the Sport & Rights Alliance
The Sport & Rights Alliance’s mission is to promote the rights and well-being of those most affected by human rights risks associated with the delivery of sport. Its partners include Amnesty International, The Army of Survivors, Committee to Protect Journalists, Football Supporters Europe, Human Rights Watch, ILGA World (The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association), the International Trade Union Confederation, and World Players Association, UNI Global Union. As a global coalition of leading nongovernmental organisations and trade unions, the Sport & Rights Alliance works together to ensure sports bodies, governments, and other relevant stakeholders give rise to a world of sport that protects, respects, and fulfils international standards for human rights, labor rights, child wellbeing and safeguarding, and anti-corruption.
