| （School of Law，Tianjin University，Tianjin 300072，China) Abstract: Participation in sports is a basic human right, and refugees have the right too to participate in sports competitions without being discriminated. The refugee representative team’s participation in the Rio Olympic Games in 2016 highlighted the Olympic movement’s pursuit for beautiful values such as human rights, but in the mean time, exposed some deficiencies of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in term of good governance. The Olympic movement should be bound by the Olympic Charter. The Olympic Charter divides the power of vari-ous organizations. The Session of the IOC has the Olympic Charter amendment right. The Executive Committee of the IOC and the Court of Arbitration for Sport share the Charter interpretation right. Normative document interpre-tation methods are diversified, text interpretation may produce an effect different from the usual meanings of words, but interpretation cannot totally deviate from the text, or even substantially abandon the text. The Olympic Charter expressly stipulates that a competition participating athlete must represent a country, yet the Executive Committee interprets it as that an athlete can represent any country or region. The Executive Committee’s interpretation obvi-ously exceeds its interpretation power given by the Olympic Charter. The Executive Committee’s decision to allow the refugee representative team to participate in the games has undermined the predictability of the Olympic Char-ter, and violated the Charter amendment right that belongs to the Session. The IOC should make arrangements for the refugees’ competition participation issue by means of Charter amendment by the Session, but not let the Execu-tive Committee interpret the Charter at will.
Key words: sports law；Olympic Charter；refugee representative team；Rio Olympic Games；International Olympic Committee |
