<p class="reg-lead">The UNESCO International Convention against Doping in Sport, adopted in 2005 — the treaty that enabled States to give the World Anti-Doping Code international legal force.</p>

<table class="reg-facts">
<tr><td>Adoption</td><td><b>2005</b> — UNESCO General Conference</td></tr>
<tr><td>Type of instrument</td><td>Multilateral treaty — binding on States Parties</td></tr>
<tr><td>Authentic texts</td><td>English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese</td></tr>
<tr><td>Relationship to WADA</td><td>The mechanism by which States accept the <b>World Anti-Doping Code</b></td></tr>
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<h2>What problem did this Convention solve?</h2>
<p>The World Anti-Doping Code is issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), but WADA is a private body and its Code binds only those who have accepted it — federations and athletes. States remained outside that chain, even though a large part of the practical means of combating doping — border control, pharmaceutical regulation, funding of laboratories and criminal prosecution of trafficking — lies in their hands.</p>
<p>This Convention fills that gap: by acceding to it, a State Party undertakes to give effect to the principles of the Code within its territory, to support the national anti-doping programme, to restrict access to prohibited substances and to develop education and research.</p>
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<div class="reg-sec hi">
<h2>Connection with the Iranian national system</h2>
<p>Iran's National Anti-Doping Organisation (NADO) and its regulations acquire their meaning within this framework. The chain linking a domestic doping case to the global system is made up of three links: the <strong>World Anti-Doping Code</strong>, issued by WADA; <strong>this Convention</strong>, which binds the State; and the <strong>national regulations</strong>, drawn up by the national organisation on the basis of both.</p>
<p>In practice this means that an objection to the national organisation's procedure is not measured against the domestic text alone; its consistency with WADA's international standards is also a matter for examination.</p>
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<div class="reg-sec">
<h2>Who this document matters to</h2>
<p>For an athlete facing a doping case, this Convention explains why a State body has a role in the process alongside the federation. For sports lawyers, it is the instrument that establishes the State's undertaking to observe the World Anti-Doping Code, and for that reason it can be invoked in defences that rely on international standards.</p>
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International Convention against Doping in Sport (2005)

<p class="reg-lead">The International Convention against Apartheid in Sports, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1985 — the first binding international instrument to make racial discrimination in sport a matter of State obligation.</p>

<table class="reg-facts">
<tr><td>Adoption</td><td><b>10 December 1985</b> — General Assembly of the United Nations</td></tr>
<tr><td>Registration</td><td>3 April 1988 — No. 25822, United Nations Treaty Series</td></tr>
<tr><td>Authentic texts</td><td>Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish</td></tr>
<tr><td>Type of instrument</td><td>Multilateral treaty — binding on States Parties</td></tr>
</table>

<div class="reg-sec">
<h2>What this Convention provides</h2>
<p>The treaty was drafted against the historical background of the South African apartheid system and binds States Parties to refrain from any sporting cooperation with a country practising apartheid. Its obligations are not merely declaratory: they include preventing the dispatch of teams and athletes, refusing to host events, and imposing restrictions on financial and media support for such contacts.</p>
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<div class="reg-sec hi">
<h2>Why an instrument from 1985 is still read</h2>
<p>The present-day significance of this Convention lies in the system it established, not in the situation to which it responded. It was the first instrument to establish at treaty level that <strong>sport is not a domain outside States' human rights obligations</strong> and that discrimination in sport can be a matter of international responsibility.</p>
<p>It is this same logic that was later repeated in the instruments of the Olympic Movement: the prohibition of discrimination in the Olympic Charter, and the possibility of suspending a National Olympic Committee or a federation that breaches this principle. In contemporary cases concerning the exclusion of an athlete from participation on grounds of nationality or race, this Convention may be cited as normative precedent.</p>
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<div class="reg-sec">
<h2>Who this document matters to</h2>
<p>For the sports law researcher and for counsel working on cases concerning discrimination in sport, this Convention is the historical point of departure. Its text also shows how a State obligation towards an international sporting body takes shape — a mechanism repeated in later instruments, including the Convention against Doping.</p>
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International Convention against Apartheid in Sports (United Nations, 1985)

<p class="reg-lead">The International Charter of Physical Education and Sport, adopted by UNESCO at the twentieth session of the General Conference in Paris on 21 November 1978 — the instrument that first proclaimed sport to be a fundamental right.</p>

<table class="reg-facts">
<tr><td>Adoption</td><td><b>21 November 1978</b> — UNESCO General Conference, Paris</td></tr>
<tr><td>Authority</td><td>United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)</td></tr>
<tr><td>Declared basis</td><td>The Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights</td></tr>
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<h2>What does this Charter proclaim?</h2>
<p>The preamble makes its link with the foundational human rights instruments explicit: it recalls that in the Charter of the United Nations the peoples proclaimed their faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and worth of the human person, and from this concludes that access to physical education and sport must be assured for all.</p>
<p>The Charter does not seek to lay down technical rules; it proclaims principles on which States' sports policy is to be founded: universal access without discrimination, the place of physical education within the educational system, the training of qualified personnel, the provision of facilities and equipment, and support for research.</p>
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<h2>Sport as a right</h2>
<p>This Charter's principal contribution is the change it worked in the standing of sport in legal discourse. Before it, sport was treated as a matter of cultural or health policy; this instrument placed it among <strong>fundamental rights</strong> and imposed on States the duty to make access possible.</p>
<p>The practical consequence of this framework is that the exclusion of a section of the population — on grounds of sex, disability, or economic and geographical situation — from access to sport is not an administrative shortcoming but a matter that can be raised in the language of rights. The Charter is the foundation on which subsequent UNESCO instruments and sport-for-all programmes have been built.</p>
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<div class="reg-sec">
<h2>Who this document matters to</h2>
<p>For the sports policy-maker, the researcher and the lawyer working on cases concerning access and discrimination, this Charter is a normative basis at the international level — particularly on questions such as the right of women and persons with disabilities to take part in sport.</p>
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