Topline:
A key document laying out how Olympics organizers will address human rights issues like civil rights, homelessness and human trafficking in the summer of 2028 has not been made public, despite a Dec. 31, 2025, deadline.
Why now: Talk of a boycott, fear about ICE agents, and concern about L.A.'s unhoused population have been swirling around preparations for the Olympic Games for months. But last week, some L.A. City Council members said at a committee meeting that they had not seen the report. Neither have local human rights advocates.
The backstory: LA28, the private nonprofit putting on the Games, is responsible for creating a "Human Rights Strategy" in consultation with the city, according to a contract with Los Angeles. It was supposed to be completed by the end of 2025.
Read on... LA28's response to fulfilling its role in the report.
A key document laying out how Olympics organizers will address human rights issues like civil rights, homelessness and human trafficking in the summer of 2028 has not been made public, despite a Dec. 31, 2025, deadline.
Talk of a boycott, fear about ICE agents, and concern about L.A.'s unhoused population have been swirling around preparations for the Olympic Games for months. But last week, some L.A. City Council members said at a committee meeting that they had not seen the report. Neither have local human rights advocates.
" It's just the lack of transparency," said Stephanie Richard, who leads an anti-trafficking initiative at Loyola Law School. "Why wouldn't the reports have been put out the day that they were provided?"
LA28, the private nonprofit putting on the Games, is responsible for creating a "Human Rights Strategy" in consultation with the city, according to a contract with Los Angeles. It was supposed to be completed by the end of 2025.
Spokespeople for LA28 say it has fulfilled its "obligation to the city" and that the organization is working with L.A. on next steps. When asked by LAist, city officials did not disclose who had seen the human rights document or what those next steps were.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson sets the agenda for the ad-hoc city council committee on the Olympic Games. But his office didn't respond to requests for comment on if he had seen the report. The mayor's office also did not return repeated requests for comment on who at the city has the Human Rights Strategy.
While advocates wait to see the report, some are concerned about what will be in it.
Richard with Loyola Law School said she participated in a call with LA28 to advise on the human rights strategy, but she was disheartened when there was no follow-up conversation.
" It feels like the human rights plans have always been very like big picture and nothing concrete," she said.
Richard also has her eye on the upcoming World Cup, which requires a human rights plan, too. She told LAist she wants to see LA28 and FIFA put money behind these efforts. She compiled her own report with a long list of suggestions ahead of the World Cup and Olympics, including the demand that both organizations negotiate with the federal government to ensure immigration enforcement doesn't conduct raids around sporting venues.
Catherine Sweetser, who directs a human rights litigation clinic at UCLA Law, has been researching the organizing committee's process in putting together its human rights strategy.
Sweetser said LA28 had not called public meetings about its approach to issues like homelessness, and had not to her knowledge engaged people who might be directly affected by the Olympic Games, like people living on the streets of Los Angeles.
"The only way that we're going to get real solutions is to listen to the people who are affected," she said. "And right now I don't see that happening with this human rights process."
LAist has also requested an interview LA28's senior human rights advisor, Julieta Valls Noyes.
