The International Olympic Committee stated on Oct. 16 that it’s discontinuing 12 of its standing commissions and can convene knowledgeable working teams as wanted as a substitute. It described the change as a transfer from “a commission-based approach to a working group approach,” one that can “enable more targeted engagement on key strategic priorities and policy development.” The commissions had been paused since February whereas the IOC assessed, in its phrases, “future models of engagement.”
Among the 12 are the our bodies that suggested the IOC on human rights, gender equality, sustainability, tradition and Olympic schooling.
The duties themselves are a distinct matter. All 5 topics are written into the Olympic Charter, the IOC’s structure — and the Charter additionally explains why these 12 our bodies could possibly be closed by a call of the president whereas the 16 that stay couldn’t.
The duties are within the Charter
Two of them sit within the Fundamental Principles of Olympism, the tier above the Charter’s numbered Rules. Principle 1 commits Olympism to “social responsibility and respect for internationally recognised human rights … within the remit of the Olympic Movement.” Principle 4 opens: “The practice of sport is a human right.”
The others are missions listed in Rule 2. The IOC is to “encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women.” It is to “encourage and support a responsible concern for environmental issues, to promote sustainable development in sport and to require that the Olympic Games are held accordingly.” It is to advertise a optimistic legacy from the Games, to assist initiatives “blending sport with culture and education,” and to assist the International Olympic Academy and different establishments “which dedicate themselves to Olympic education.”
The announcement doesn’t say how these duties will now be carried out. It names no alternative physique for any of them, and it states no criterion by which the 12 have been chosen.
The Charter names seven commissions. All seven survived.
Searching the total textual content of the version in drive returns seven fee varieties and no others.
The Bye-law to Rule 21 requires that an Athletes’ Commission “shall be constituted,” nearly all of its members elected by athletes. It requires a Members Election Commission. It establishes the Olympic Solidarity Commission to hold out duties assigned elsewhere within the Charter. It directs the president to arrange two Future Host Commissions, Coordination Commissions for the Games, and a Health, Medicine and Science Commission with anti-doping duties written in. Rule 22 offers individually for the Ethics Commission.
Every a kind of is on the IOC’s listing of our bodies persevering with. None of the 12 being discontinued seems within the Charter in any respect.
Those seven account for eight of the 16 line gadgets the IOC listed as persevering with. Four extra are boards of corporations and a basis — IOC Television and Marketing Services, Olympic Broadcasting Services, Olympic Channel Services and the Olympic Refuge Foundation — which have their very own authorized type. The remaining 4 are the Audit Committee, the Finance Commission, Legal Affairs and the Human Resources Committee. The Charter names none of them; its solely financial-oversight requirement is that the Session appoint an impartial auditor.
Removing any of the seven Charter-named commissions would require amending the Olympic Charter, which solely the IOC Session can do. The different our bodies wanted nobody’s approval. Of these, the 4 that deal with cash, authorized publicity and employees have been stored. The relaxation weren’t.
Where that authority comes from
Rule 21 is express, and it’s not new. The president “establishes permanent or other standing or ad hoc commissions and working groups whenever it appears necessary,” units their phrases of reference, “designates all their members and decides their dissolution.” No fee or working group might meet with out the president’s prior settlement, and the president sits on all of them as a member ex officio.
The rule is similar in all three Charter editions in drive since January 2025. Commissions have been by no means impartial of the presidency; underneath Rule 21 they might not convene with out its consent.
So what really adjustments
In constitutional phrases, a fee and a working group are the identical instrument: each created, staffed and wound up on the president’s discretion. The distinction was follow relatively than rule. Commissions had membership lists revealed on the IOC’s web site, a printed mission, a named chair and annual conferences in Lausanne, with 10 to as many as 30 members, AP reported. Working teams carry no such conference.
The IOC has already proven what that appears like. In September 2025 President Kirsty Coventry created 4 working teams underneath her “Fit for the Future” course of, one among them on safety of the feminine class. The IOC stated on the time that the names of that group’s members “will remain confidential for now to protect the integrity of the group and their work.” That group’s work produced the coverage the IOC Executive Board authorized on March 26, limiting eligibility for female-category occasions to organic females as decided by a one-time SRY gene screening, efficient from the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Coventry stated the coverage was “based on science and has been led by medical experts”; it drew objections from human rights organisations and from Andrew Sinclair, the scientist who recognized the SRY gene in 1990, NPR reported. The assessment was assigned to that panel relatively than to the IOC’s standing gender equality fee, AP reported.
The Charter was amended twice this yr
Each version information which provisions its Session modified.
The 145th Session, on Feb. 3, amended the Bye-law to Rule 21 — the supply itemizing which commissions the IOC should have. The change was to rename one among them: the Medical and Scientific Commission turned the Health, Medicine and Science Commission. No named fee was added or eliminated.
The 146th Session, on June 24, amended the Fundamental Principles and Rule 2. That Session additionally endorsed the “Fit for the Future” technique the IOC says this restructuring flows from. The amendments involved neutrality: a brand new mission, Rule 2.6, requires the IOC “to apply neutrality at all times, free from governmental, cultural, societal or economic pressure,” and Fundamental Principle 5 was rewritten in order that sports activities organisations “shall apply neutrality at all times” relatively than “political neutrality.”
The provisions carrying the human rights, gender equality, sustainability, legacy, tradition and schooling duties have been renumbered by that new clause and in any other case left phrase for phrase as they stood.
One physique is on neither listing
The Esports Commission seems neither among the many 12 discontinued nor among the many 16 persevering with. Its actions have been reported suspended in May by the Japanese information company Kyodo, after Coventry wrote to its members in late January in search of a extra built-in strategy to esports. No dissolution has been introduced.
What the paperwork set up
The IOC’s personal departments proceed to do that work — the Sustainability Department, the Olympism365 Department, the Sports Department, the human rights group. None is affected by the announcement. The IOC additionally says the shift follows “more than a year of consultation and review, including discussions with its commission members,” and 9 working teams working since mid-2025 have produced outcomes, together with the March coverage and a three-stage reform of the host-election course of authorized in June.
What the Charter exhibits is narrower, and it’s not in dispute. The duties are unchanged, two of them within the doc’s highest tier. Every fee the Charter requires remains to be in place. The our bodies which have gone are amongst these it doesn’t require — although not all of these went. And the instrument that replaces them operates underneath the identical presidential authority, with not one of the publication follow that had hooked up to commissions.
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