March 30 – Norwegian FA president Lise Klaveness has received the inaugural Ernest Lee Jahncke Award, awarded for courageous leadership in sport.
At the award ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam, Klaveness said: “You need to use the platform you have to speak about the values and the important cases. When you are given these responsibilities, media and others will go – what about this case? Sometimes you become overwhelmed because you are a football administrator and you have to focus on your job. But I will commit because it’s part of putting your neck out.”
In 2022, Klaveness rose to fame when she delivered a speech at the FIFA Congress in Doha, Qatar, demanding FIFA protect migrant workers and protect LGBTQ+ rights. Her challenge to the game’s male leadership and spotlighting Qatar were moments that made global headlines.
The organisers of the Ernest Lee Jahncke Award said that she was “being honoured for her consistent, outspoken and ethically grounded leadership in international football, and for addressing institutional inconsistencies in governance, integrity and human rights from within the system itself.”
The award was named after Ernest Lee Jahncke, who opposed the hosting of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin under Nazi rule. Jahncke, an American and an IOC member, was the first member to be expelled by the IOC.
Edwin Schoon, a journalist, Jurryt van de Vooren, a sports historian, and Sandra Meeuwsen, a scholar, conceived the award. It stands in contrast to the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize Award that the world governing body’s president Gianni Infantino handed to US President Donald Trump last December.
Klaveness said: “Honesty is honesty. That is not about culture. We have to call it what it is. We cannot be a global football federation that becomes political and supports state leaders. We have to have arm’s length distance.”
FIFA and Infantino have repeatedly defended the Peace Prize. Following its award, Trump has attacked Venezuela and renditioned its president, and launched a war with Israel against Iran.
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