Immediate Release
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Oppose the Normalization of Genocide and International Gangsterism: Demand that the World Cup be Moved from the United States
Black Alliance for Peace’s North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights Calls on the Public and Nations to demand that FIFA move the Games out of the U.S. and take a stand for people-centered human rights.
January 13, 2026 - U.S. officials have chosen to operate outside the bounds of law and basic morality — from supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and illegal settlement expansion, to launching a direct military strike on Venezuela that kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, to escalating repression against migrants and racialized communities inside the U.S. itself that has even led to murder. These are not isolated policies, but interconnected expressions of an empire that uses illegal violence abroad and, in the U.S., to enforce dominance. BAP’s North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights believes that this disqualifies the U.S. from hosting the World Cup in 2026 and the Olympics in 2028.
Inside the U.S., state violence is increasingly directed at Black, Brown, and Indigenous people through dehumanizing rhetoric, mass surveillance, immigration raids, and impunity for law enforcement. Between January and October 2025 alone, ICE carried out an estimated 220,000 arrests — a record surge that underscores the regime of criminalization faced by migrants. Amid these raids, a 37-year-old woman, Renée Nicole Good, was fatally shot by an ICE agent during an enforcement operation in Minneapolis, an incident that has sparked outrage and raised deep concerns about unchecked state violence.
This same logic of domination underpins U.S. actions abroad and repression at home: a system in which “might makes right.” As a result, the communities most at risk from U.S. repression are also among the World Cup’s most passionate fans and among the Global South nations participating in the 2026 Games.
“Allowing the U.S. to host the World Cup or any other international games would be an affront to the victims of U.S. lawlessness and its support for an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people,” according to Ajamu Baraka, director of the BAP’s North-South Project. Baraka continues, “The U.S. is an unsafe and illegitimate host. FIFA’s own statutes commit it to respecting internationally recognized human rights, yet allowing the U.S. to host. At the same time, it enables genocide, military aggression, racialized repression, and the mass criminalization of migrants, normalizing and legitimizing these crimes. In doing so, FIFA becomes complicit.”
The World Cup should not be used to launder state violence and normalize genocide and international gangsterism. Organizations and people of conscience must demand that FIFA move the Games out of the U.S. and take a stand for people-centered human rights rather than empire, repression, and impunity.
The Project will be releasing a video worldwide on January 15th, the Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King that makes the claim for why the games must be moved from the U.S. BAP is asking for the international public to sign the petition to FIFA to move the games and for all people of conscience to boycott the U.S. until it is ready to join the community of nations as an equal partner committed to justice and upholding international standards of decency.