No complaints were received from ethnic or sexual minorities about discrimination in the first three weeks of the tournament, Powar told reporters.
“The Russian people themselves have played a magnificent role making people feel welcome. Many people have been surprised,” said Powar.
The head of sustainability and diversity for FIFA, the football governing body, stressed at the press conference that widely publicized concerns of discrimination ahead of the June 14 to July 15 World Cup didn’t materialize.
Negative predictions “were proved completely wrong,” said Federico Addiechi.
FIFA formed a complaints mechanism for rights activists and journalists for all FIFA-related activities weeks before the tournament kicked off in Moscow.
“There might be one or two, or few, cases where things did not go the way we planned for,” Addiechi said. “[But] if we bear in mind that we have 1.5 million Fan IDs distributed with over 700,000 international guests coming to Russia, the numbers of incidents we’ve experienced have been very low.”
