FIFA’s ‘performative’ human rights plans raise displacement fears in Vancouver ahead of the 2026 World Cup

At the corner of Main and East Hastings in Vancouver, glass pipes lie scattered across a rain-soaked sidewalk. A billow of smoke escapes from tent encampments stitched together by tarps, blankets and umbrellas. This is the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside: a compact neighbourhood that is home to most of the city’s unhoused population.

Just a few short blocks away, a colosseum-shaped stadium glows in alternating shades of neon blue and red. The behemoth is B.C. Place, and 350,000 visitors are expected to gather around the building once the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off this summer. While technically located in Vancouver’s downtown core, the stadium borders the Downtown Eastside.

The contrast is stark. Two-thirds of residents in the Downtown Eastside live below the poverty line, compared to roughly one in ten across Vancouver. But the Downtown Eastside is the notorious epicentre of a diverse and complex range of alarming social issues – including disproportionately high levels of poverty, homelessness, mental health crisis, sex work, crime, and drug use. 

Given its proximity to B.C. Place, the Downtown Eastside is on the cusp of FIFA's planned two-kilometre ‘controlled area.’ Under a temporary bylaw, the zone will be subject to stricter rules governing cleanliness, public space use, and signage. These rules aim to protect the FIFA brand. Vancouver is also contractually required, as a FIFA Host City, to make the city “as attractive as possible” at its own expense.

A wide range of local advocacy groups have voiced concerns over how homeless populations in the Downtown Eastside will be impacted by FIFA’s policies and bylaws. 

“There’s a very common playbook with mega-events,” says Laura Macintyre from Pivot Legal Society, a legal advocacy organization based in Vancouver. “Existing efforts to displace people ramp up.”

In an interview with Play the Game, Macintyre explained that forced displacements – commonly known as ‘street sweeps’ – are already a daily reality for homeless people in Downtown Eastside. Like clockwork, city workers and police officers ‘sweep’ the Downtown Eastside every morning, demanding that unhoused people relocate off the streets. While sheltering in place overnight is a protected right under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, daytime sheltering is not.

A 2022 report by Pivot Legal Society documented the scale of these practices, noting that over a five-day period, city crews removed thousands of dollars’ worth of belongings from homeless individuals.

Since last August, anti-poverty advocates, local politicians, non-profits, and unhoused individuals have voiced fears that the 2026 World Cup would intensify street sweeps. Their concerns aren’t without precedent.

Cities from Osaka to Chicago relocated homeless communities away from high-visibility areas ahead of hosting FIFA tournaments. More recently, during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, FIFA estimated that around 4,000 families were displaced from stadium construction. And during the 2022 tournament in Qatar, landlords kicked out masses of largely foreign tenants, sometimes with just days notice, to cash in on high rental rates during the games.

But this time, the tournament came with a promise.

According to the ‘United Bid’ — a joint Canada-US-Mexico hosting proposal — the 2026 World Cup would “not directly or indirectly contribute to an increase in homelessness".

A plan to make a plan

This was a landmark commitment following the introduction of FIFA’s first Human Rights Policy in 2017. FIFA announced it would require any future hosts to produce their own Human Rights Action Plans (HRAPs) ahead of the tournament.

The requirements were first applicable to the 2026 games, given the preceding 2022 Qatar tournament bid was awarded seven years prior to the policy announcement.

The HRAP was said to be a forcing function for cities to confront the tournament’s risk on their local vulnerable communities.

Jennifer Li is the director of the Center for Community Health Innovation at Georgetown Law and coordinator of Dignity 2026: a coalition to protect those at risk of harm from the World Cup. Li said HRAPs were intended to address how certain groups could be impacted from the games.

“They were supposed to acknowledge where existing laws and policies may be insufficient,” she explains.

Amanda Burrows, executive director of First United, a non-profit providing essential services to the Downtown Eastside, anticipated the plan would include concrete protections to prevent displacement and adhere to the human rights principles that FIFA now requires.

“I expected the plan to include clear commitments around preventing sweeps, expanding low-barrier spaces and ensuring people have accessible ways to report rights concerns in real time,” she says.

A framework built to be stagnant

FIFA’s Human Rights Policy describes housing rights as a “salient human rights risk” arising from the World Cup. As such, each FIFA World Cup host city was supposed to form a Host Committee group which would address how the tournament wouldn’t "directly or indirectly contribute to an increase in homelessness.”

But Host Committees are not required to include human rights experts. Jennifer Li explains that this is why the committees were expected to consult with outside organizations. Vancouver’s Host Committee – who are paid with public funds, and in some instances, at over twice the average Canadian salary – did not include any representatives of the Downtown Eastside organisations.

Macintyre says that an anti-FIFA coalition, which Pivot is a part of, started making requests to meet with the Committee as of June 2024. Macintyre said those requests were denied. The city of Vancouver did not reply to our request for comment in time for publication.

"Pivot is connected to dozens of groups in the Downtown Eastside who are all organising around this stuff,” Macintyre says. “If it's happening at all, it sounds like a performative box-checking exercise.”

Recognition without remedy

After multiple weeks-long extensions, Vancouver’s HRAP was published on 19 February, less than four months ahead of the tournament’s first local match.

The 69-page document acknowledges that the World Cup presents risks to the Downtown Eastside's homeless population. The document names the neighbourhood's outsized vulnerability, and commits to maintaining existing shelter access and outreach services. The city also noted a list of consulted organisations in its HRAP, which included housing and shelter groups servicing the Downtown Eastside.

At the same time, the plan makes clear that current enforcement practices will continue.
"It is important to be transparent that the City's daily public realm management and by-law compliance work will continue,” the document states, “to ensure that parks remain usable by the whole community during the daytime and sidewalks remain safe, clean, and accessible."

The city of Vancouver has remained steadfast that while it will be keeping sidewalks safe, it won’t be displacing people. The Host Committee’s website reads, “Vancouver is committed to upholding human rights and has no plans to displace or relocate people experiencing homelessness due to FIFA World Cup 2026 Host City requirements.”

This distinction, advocates suggest, is purely semantic. The daily partnership of city workers and police to clear individuals from sidewalks through Vancouver’s Street and Traffic By-Law might not be called ‘displacement.’ But for the people who are moved along, the effect is the same.

For Macintyre, the language of the HRAP’s is revealing. Her interpretation is that Vancouver is acknowledging it’s committed to FIFA’s human rights expectations and that it will protect unhoused and precariously-housed residents from displacement – but that it has no intention of scaling back street sweeps as a result.

“I think it’s revelatory that they are willing to go so far as to include this caveat in their public human rights framework,” she says.

In an emailed statement, the city said daily work will include requiring “people to remove structures and pack up personal and other belongings that impact access to or safety in the public realm or are related to unpermitted activities,” while adding, “Importantly, people are not asked to leave the area.”

The city also confirmed it “will continue to provide its homelessness services and programs throughout the period of FIFA World Cup 2026.” 

In other words, Vancouver plans to maintain the status quo as hundreds of thousands of visitors flock the city streets.

Consultation after decisions have been made

Frontline homelessness organisations who weren’t consulted during the HRAP planning process are now being brought in to patch the gaps. These are the same organisations the city will need to rely upon when it absorbs the event’s toll on the city’s low-income and unhoused residents. 

Macintyre says Pivot was only offered a meeting with Vancouver’s Host Committee the day after the HRAP was released.

Advocates had concrete proposals ready long before the HRAP went live. Burrows put forward recommendations which Dignity combined with other feedback from community partners and organizers. The list that included a moratorium on street sweeps for the duration of the games, mobile harm reduction sites, and permanent public washrooms. 

None of that made it into the plan.

"The conversation we're seeing now is about how to strengthen the plan so it includes clear standards, accountability, and accessible ways for people to raise concerns," Burrows says. "But time is running out."

For Macintyre, the question is about what’s next, as the final HRAP will be released in May. It’s unclear what actions could be taken by then, with just weeks until the games.

"FIFA's coming," Macintyre says. "We're not going to stop it. It's really just: how do we mitigate harm? How do people figure out how to protect each other?"