Page 11 - THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE’S ACCOUNTABILITY FOR HARMFUL CONSEQUENCES OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES- A MULTI-METHOD INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ANALYSIS Ryan Gautier

Chapter One
Introduction, Scope, and Theoretical Framework of the Thesis
1. Introduction: @SochiProblems
Preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, like those of Olympic Games past (and likely, future), went down to the wire. Stories of unfinished infrastructure ran rampant as media members streamed into the Russian city of Sochi and the nearby Olympic venues of Adler (the ‘Coastal Cluster’) and Krasnaya Polyana (the ‘Mountain Cluster’).1 This state of affairs in and around Sochi spawned the short-lived Twitter account @Sochiproblems, which on the eve of the Olympic Games had over 30% more followers than the official Sochi Winter Olympics Twitter account.2
Of all the possible reasons for the delays in construction, it is doubtful that a lack of manpower was one of them. Estimates of the number of construction workers employed to prepare Sochi for the Olympic Games reveal a virtual city at work. In 2011, a total of 56,000 workers had been employed to work on Sochi’s venues,3 with the number rising to 70,000 in 2012.4 Almost 700 contractors were responsible for these workers.5 Certainly, not all of these workers were recruited from the 340,000 inhabitants of Sochi. While some workers came from other parts of Russia, a significant percentage of these workers were migrant workers (i.e., a worker employed in a state where they are not a national).6 In 2012, Russia’s Federal Migration Service estimated that 16,000 workers (or about 23% of
1 See, e.g., David Segal, ‘First Event of Sochi Olympics: The Hotel Construction Sprint’ New York Times (New York, 4 February 2014) A1.
2 Michelle Arrouas, ‘@SochiProblems is Way More Popular than the Official Sochi Account on Twitter’ Time (7 February 2014) <http://time.com/6013/sochiproblems-is-way-more-popular-than-the-official-sochi-account-on- twitter/> accessed 15 May 2014.
3 Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee, The Olympic Games Impact: Summary Report (2013) 25.
4 Human Rights Watch, Race to the Bottom: Exploitation of Migrant Workers Ahead of Russia’s 2014 Winter
Olympic Games in Sochi (2013) 20.
5 Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee (n 3) 11.
6 See International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their
Families (1990), A/Res/45/158, art. 2.1 (Migrant Workers Convention).