« SMALL LEGAL GUIDE – FOR A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES OF INCIVILITIES, VIOLENCE AND DISCRIMINATION IN SPORT » (2ND EDITION, OCTOBER 2018)

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Country: France

Organisation responsible: Ministry of Sports

Main topic addressed: Prevention of violence and discrimination in sports, including gender-based violence and discrimination.

Type of resource/practice: Awareness-raising instrument targeting all those involved in sports, focusing on gender-based violence and discrimination and on the legal consequences associated with them. Every case (including the one about sexist behaviour – factsheet 11) is completed with questions and answers and real-life examples in order to allow people involved in sport (including managers and educators) to have a deeper understanding of the different problems and to better prevent them.

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Discipline: Multi-sport

Target group(s): All people involved in the field of sport

Timing: The Small Legal Guide was published in May 2018 (1st edition). In October 2018, the second edition was published, integrating the changes introduced by law 2018-703 of 3 August 2018, reinforcing the fight against gender-based violence and sexual abuse. This tool is therefore up to date in terms of the legislation and rules in France on the prevention of violence and discrimination in sport.

Language: French

Brief description of the practice: The tool is designed to shed light on 18 issues of prevention of violence and discrimination in sport, in an educational and interactive way. It has two main objectives :

• To allow everyone to have a basic level of legal information to better understand the consequences of a wrongdoing;
• Better protect the victims of such deviant behaviour.

Content and objectives: The Small Legal Guide answers the expectations of people involved in sport who wished to have accessible legal information. It completes an existing set of legal information, created in 2004 by the Ministry of Sports, containing the Legal Guide on the prevention of and fight against incivilities, violence and discrimination in sport (available to legal professionals in the field of sport). The 4th edition of the guide was published in January 2019 (and included in the above-mentioned leaflet).

Steps/activities of the practice: Driven by the Ministry of Sports, the Small Legal Guide is the result of the co-operation with multiple French Ministries, including the Ministry of Justice, and various institutions, such as the Défenseur des Droits and many actors from the sport and voluntary sectors. It is the result of 18 months of work, which started in Summer 2016.
It deals with 18 issues, including the one on sexist behaviour and its consequences, in an accessible and understandable way. It is part of the collection of prevention tools aimed at preventing violence in sport from becoming commonplace.

Resources required: This tool is part of the Ministry’s roadmap towards delivering legal information in an accessible and specific way to each sport actor, including managers and educators.
The Ministry supports this prevention policy through the development and updating of a range of tools for sports stakeholders, an offer which does not require significant specific financial commitments. The Ministry relies on a project manager in charge of the protection of sports ethics and the promotion of the values of sport (whose mission is to oversee the development and update of the offer/departmental tools on these issues). The specific financial commitments have almost exclusively concerned the printing of the paper version of the Small Guide (2000 copies for sport actors at a cost of 10,00 € in 2018). The tool is also published online by the Ministry's communication office, which is also in charge of the layout of the guide.
The staff of the Ministry is in charge of the development of the tool and its dissemination.

Achievements and outcomes: It is still early to proceed with an evaluation of the tool. However, the Ministry received some requests to have copies of the guide. At the moment, the Ministry is promoting its tools, following the request of the current Minister, who expressed the need to make these tools known in the world of sport. A visibility strategy is currently being elaborated with the communication office, in order to increase the popularity of these tools, especially so that stakeholders take ownership and use it in awareness-raising or communication sessions.

Challenges and limitations: There were no particular difficulties, since the Small Guide is included in a recognised set of tools (at inter-ministerial level). A team, co-ordinated by the ministry's project manager, is now firmly established and naturally participates in the ministry's requests.
This team has gradually been created since 2011 (with the update of the 2004 legal guide for professionals, since this update is made every 3 years) with the same mission manager. Stability in this position can be a guarantee to build this network and allow a step back on the tools to make them evolve to better meet the expectations of sport stakeholders.

Follow-up ideas and future plans: Towards the end of 2018, an evaluation of the Small Guide will be carried out through a survey within our network, which includes sport federations. This will serve as a base for the next update of the Small Guide, which will be published in 2021, with new real-life examples.

Further information: Small legal guide – for a better understanding of the legal consequences of incivilities, violence and discrimination in sport: http://www.sports.gouv.fr/prevention/incivilites-violences/Se-documenter/article/2eme-edition-du-Petit-guide-juridique-Grand-Public

Contact person: [email protected]