Assessing the impact on human rights of the Rio Olympic Games

This study presented an overview into a less considered and academically studied legacy of sports mega-events: human rights. This study was bounded within the context of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and assessed the impacts they had on human rights. Human rights were defined at first, and their relationship with sports and sports mega-events was examined. Methodologically, qualitative data were collected in secondary open databases for this research. The study structured and analysed the data according to a theoretical model underpinned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Regarding the Rio Olympic Games, a mix of positive and negative human rights impacts was found. Overall, the research reached the conclusion that the negative impacts outweighed the positive ones. This study thus confronted the notion of sport innate goodness, exposing the harm to the local population that the Olympics caused. This research also emphasized the importance of taking into account contextual valuables when making human rights impacts assessments.