International sporting events are often presented as celebrations of our shared humanity. They are meant to transcend borders, politics, religion, and conflict. For a few weeks, the world gathers around a common language of play, where talent, effort, and teamwork are supposed to matter more than nationality, wealth, or power.
Yet sometimes these events reveal more about who we are than the values they claim to embody.
The incidents surrounding the opening of the 2026 FIFA World Cup — players detained at airports, referees and entire delegations denied visas, supporters turned back despite valid travel authorizations — can certainly be interpreted as administrative failures, necessary security measures, or unfortunate exceptions. But viewed together, they invite a deeper question: What cultural assumptions make certain forms of unequal treatment appear normal, necessary, or acceptable?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I published The White-West: A Look in the Mirror, a collection of essays originally published in Pressenza. In those articles, I argued that many of the tensions commonly explained through politics or economics are rooted in something deeper: a historical and cultural formation that continues to shape how the West understands itself and relates to others.
I called this formation the White-West—not as a racial category or a moral judgment on individuals, but as a cultural and historical landscape shaped by centuries of empire, colonial expansion, hierarchies of civilization, and the conviction that some institutions possess the authority to define the terms by which others participate in the world.
From this perspective, the World Cup is not simply a sporting event disrupted by unfortunate incidents.
It becomes a mirror.
In January 2026, as concerns surrounding the tournament were mounting, I argued that dialogue with FIFA—not a simple boycott—could redefine the role of global sport. Rather than waiting for crises to emerge, FIFA had an opportunity to initiate difficult but necessary conversations about dignity, equal participation, and the ethical responsibilities that accompany the privilege of hosting a global event. Postponement, alternative arrangements, or broader consultations were not expressions of hostility toward football. They were invitations to reflection.
Around the same time, I suggested that FIFA should voluntarily relinquish the symbolic comfort of its Peace Prize—not as an act of self-condemnation, but as an invitation to humility. Peace is not a title to be possessed. It is a practice to be continually earned through the defense of dignity, inclusion, and equal participation.
The intention was never to shame an institution. It was to ask whether global sport is willing to hold itself to the ethical standards it so often proclaims.
These proposals, and other similar ones made by concerned people around the world, went ignored.
Before the first whistle sounded, reports emerged of athletes, referees, officials, and supporters encountering obstacles that many regarded as discriminatory, arbitrary, and degrading.
Among the incidents reported were the following:
Swiss footballer Breel Embolo’s visa was placed under review, delaying his arrival and preventing him from joining his team as scheduled.
Iraqi national team player Aymen Hussein was reportedly held for questioning for nearly seven hours upon entering the United States.
The Iranian national team spent days navigating visa procedures through the U.S. Consulate in Turkey. They were reportedly permitted entry only on match days, while fifteen members of the delegation were denied visas.
Omar Abdulkadir Artan, named CAF’s Best African Referee of 2025, was denied a visa and returned despite traveling with a diplomatic passport. FIFA later announced that he would not officiate at the tournament.
The South African national team arrived later than planned because part of its delegation was not granted visas.
Members of the Senegal national team’s staff were reportedly required to remove their shoes and subjected to lengthy searches, prompting accusations of racial profiling.
The Uzbekistan national team was searched with bomb-sniffing dogs, and footage of the incident circulated widely in international media.
Some Scottish supporters, despite qualifying for visa-free travel under the ESTA program, had their authorizations revoked shortly before departure.
Numerous supporters who had already purchased tickets and booked accommodation had visa applications rejected, resulting in significant financial losses.
Each of these incidents can be explained individually. Taken together, however, they reveal a recognizable pattern.
Some people move through the world with the presumption of trust, while others move under suspicion. Some experience borders as routine formalities, while others encounter them as spaces of uncertainty, humiliation, and arbitrary power. Some carry passports that open doors almost automatically; others discover that their dignity is conditional, dependent on decisions made without explanation and beyond appeal.
The issue is not whether states have the right to secure their borders. Every society must address legitimate concerns regarding sovereignty and public safety. The deeper question is cultural: What forms of dignity have we decided are negotiable? Whose inconvenience is considered acceptable? At what point does the exercise of authority become the normalization of humiliation?
This is where the conversation intersects with domestic violence.
Domestic violence is often understood as a private tragedy confined to the home. Yet its defining characteristic is not merely physical aggression. It is a pattern of behavior through which power and control are repeatedly used to undermine another person’s autonomy, dignity, safety, and freedom. It can involve intimidation, psychological pressure, social isolation, economic dependence, surveillance, threats, or the gradual erosion of another person’s sense of self.
Such dynamics do not emerge in a vacuum. They develop within cultures that, in subtle and overt ways, teach that domination can be justified, that unequal relationships are natural, and that those who possess authority may impose indignity in pursuit of a supposedly greater good.
This does not mean that visa restrictions are equivalent to domestic violence, nor that immigration officials are domestic abusers. The relationships are different, and the experiences are not the same.
But the underlying cultural logic deserves examination.
When repeated humiliation becomes normal, when control is routinely valued over reciprocity, when suspicion is directed disproportionately toward certain groups, and when those subjected to unequal treatment are expected to accept it quietly as the price of participation, we are witnessing patterns that belong to the same broader ecosystem of domination.
Perhaps this is one of the most difficult lessons of our time.
Violence is not only an event. It is also a culture.
It resides in habits of thought, in institutions, in assumptions about who deserves trust and who does not, who has the right to decide and who must submit. It is reproduced whenever dignity becomes conditional and humanity is organized into categories of greater and lesser worth.
If this cultural logic can shape international events intended to celebrate our common humanity, then we should not be surprised that it also appears in our homes, workplaces, schools, and communities.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply to condemn individual acts of injustice. It is to examine the cultural frameworks that make those acts imaginable and acceptable in the first place.
International sport offers a unique opportunity to practice another way of being together. It can affirm that security need not require humiliation, that difference need not produce suspicion, and that dignity is not a privilege granted to some and withheld from others.
If the cultural patterns that sustain violence are learned, they can also be unlearned.
A mirror does not accuse. It simply reflects.
The mirror was there in the histories we inherit. It was there in the warnings that were offered before the tournament began. It was there in the invitation to dialogue and in the call for institutions to align their practices with the values they celebrate.
The tragedy is not that the mirror existed.
The tragedy is that it was ignored.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup may ultimately be remembered not only for what happened on the field, but for what it revealed off it: an opportunity to ask what kind of culture we are reproducing—and what kind of culture we wish to build.
Because the game we are really playing extends far beyond football.
And in that game, community, dignity, and our shared humanity can never truly win if humiliation remains part of the rules.
