Bringing Human Rights In: The Campaign Against the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and the Origins of the Nexus Between Human Rights and the Olympic Games

Abstract

This essay investigates the American-led boycott against the 1980 Olympic Games from a human rights perspective. While it does not deny that the boycott was a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it argues that discussions over a possible Olympic boycott were popular since the mid-seventies. To human rights activists and Non-Government Organizations, this was a natural consequence of Soviet violations of human rights. In analyzing the differences between the political debates which developed in Western Europe and in the United States, it argues that the 1980 Olympic boycott represented the first time in which a proposal for an Olympic boycott was framed in the human rights language.