On the second day of its meeting in Lausanne, the IOC Executive Board discussed the situation of the four countries whose National Olympic Committees have been placed on the Olympic movement’s blacklist since last year: Afghanistan, Iran, Guatemala and India. For the first three, nothing changes. They all remain under the threat of exclusion from the Paris 2024 Games. The IOC explains that there has been no tangible progress on the issue of access to sport and education for women and girls in Afghanistan. The same standstill in Iran, where the IOC will continue to “monitor the situation and request immediate intervention by the NOC whenever there is a specific problem affecting athletes and members of the Olympic community in the country.” The IOC Executive Board added that it “reserves the right to take any appropriate action regarding the participation of the NOC and Iranian athletes in the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games, depending on how the situation develops.” In Guatemala, another country in the sights of the IOC, the National Olympic Committee was suspended last October. But the situation does not progress. It has even “rather deteriorated“, explains the IOC, a group not recognized by the body having taken control of the National Olympic Committee. As for India, it is the only one of the four to present a satisfactory copy. The IOC executive board notes that its national Olympic committee has finally held elections. A new president was elected. The 140th session of the IOC has therefore been confirmed in October 2023 in Mumbai. But the Executive Board underlines in a press release: everything is not yet perfect, the Indian NOC has still not appointed its new Director General/Secretary General, according to its statutes.
