NATIONALITY AND NATURALIZATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL SPORTS LAW: SPORTS FEDERATIONS AS GATEKEEPERS.

The institutional rules of International Sports Federations ("IFs") and the International Olympic Committee ("IOC") concerning nationality and its transfer therein are regulated by the Nottebohm safeguard, which requires the conferral of nationality under domestic laws to be consistent with international law for the conferral to be valid in the international legal sphere. The international sporting arenas qualify as international legal space, but the compatibility of naturalization laws with this legal space is regulated and enforced not by states, but by non-state entities, namely IFs and the IOC. These institutional rules possess a normative character because the pertinent stakeholders consent to them by contract, which in turn provides for the jurisdiction of internal quasi-judicial determination and ultimately gives rise to arbitral awards (as a form of ultimate appeal) to the Court of Arbitration for Sport ("CAS"). The key provision is Rule 41 of the Olympic Charter and its interpretative Bye-Laws, which provide that an athlete may switch sporting nationality provided that three years have elapsed from their last participation for the country they previously represented. This general rule may be supplemented by the institutional rules of IFs, the majority of which operate nationality review panels for this purpose. This Article selectively examines the rules and institutions of two IFs other than the IOC, namely the Fédération Internationale de Basketball (International Basketball Federation) ("FIBA") and the World Athletics Federation ("WAF"). Each struggle with different objectives and nationality transfers, chiefly naturalizations, gives rise to a number of problems and concerns that are resolved through the observance and enforcement of varying internal nationality rules. This Article suggests that a set of five questions sets the standard for a human rights impact assessment of all naturalizations in the sport domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]