'A Clear Breach': Watchdog Hits FIFA With Ethics Complaint Over Made-Up Trump 'Peace Prize'
Multiple rights organizations have slammed FIFA for giving Trump a "peace prize" given what they describe as his "appalling" human rights record.
International soccer organization FIFA has now been hit with an ethics complaint over its widely criticized decision to award President Donald Trump its first-ever "FIFA Peace Prize" last week.
The Athletic reported on Monday that FairSquare, a watchdog organization that monitors human rights abuses in the sporting world, filed an eight-page complaint with FIFA’s Ethics Committee alleging that FIFA president Gianni Infantino has repeatedly violated the organization's own code of ethics, which states that "all persons bound by the code remain politically neutral... in dealings with government institutions."
The complaint then documents multiple cases in which Infantino allegedly broke the political neutrality pledge, including his public lobbying for Trump to receive a Nobel Peace Prize; a November interview at the America Business Forum in which Infantino called Trump "a really close friend," and hit back at criticisms that the president had embraced authoritarianism; and Infantino's decision to award Trump with a made-up "peace prize" after failing to help him secure a more prestigious version.
FairSquare zeroed in on Infantino's remarks during the 2026 World Cup draw last week in which he told Trump that "you definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action for what you have obtained in your way, but you obtained it in an incredible way, and you can always count, Mr. President, on my support."
The organization remarked that "any reasonable interpretation of Mr. Infantino’s comments would conclude that he a) encouraged people to support the political agenda of President Trump, and b) expressed his personal approval of President Trump’s political agenda." This was a particularly egregious violation, FairSquare added, because Infantino was "appearing at a public event in his role as FIFA president."
Even without Infantino's gushing remarks about Trump, FairSquare said that "the award of a prize of this nature to a sitting political leader is in and of itself a clear breach of FIFA’s duty of neutrality."
FairSquare isn't the only organization to criticize Trump receiving a "peace prize" from the official governing body behind the World Cup.
Human Rights Watch was quick to blast FIFA last week for giving Trump any sort of peace prize given what it described as the administration’s “appalling” human rights record.
Jamil Dakwar, human rights director at the ACLU, also said that Trump was undeserving of the award, and he noted the administration “has aggressively pursued a systematic anti-human rights campaign to target, detain, and disappear immigrants in communities across the US—including the deployment of the National Guard in cities where the World Cup will take place.”
