On January 6, a group of 25 British members of parliament tabled a motion urging global sporting authorities to consider excluding the United States from hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup until it demonstrates compliance with international law. It followed weeks of mounting pressure across Europe over the political climate surrounding a tournament expected to draw millions of viewers and symbolising international cooperation.
Dutch broadcaster Teun van de Keuken has backed a public petition urging withdrawal from the competition while French parliamentarian Eric Coquerel has warned that participation risks legitimising policies he argued undermine international human rights standards.
Much of the scrutiny has focused on US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and broad assaults on civil liberties. The deaths of Minneapolis residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during immigration enforcement operations in January triggered nationwide outrage and protests. In 2026, at least eight people have been shot by federal immigration agents or died in immigration detention.
These developments are serious, but they point to a broader question about power and accountability – one that extends beyond domestic repression and into the consequences of US policy abroad. The war in Gaza represents a far deeper emergency.
For decades, Washington has served as Israel’s most influential international ally, providing diplomatic protection, political backing and roughly $3.8bn in annual military assistance. That partnership finances and shapes the destruction now unfolding across Palestinian territory.
Since the day the war began on October 7, 2023, Israel’s military has killed more than 72,032 Palestinians, wounded 171,661 and destroyed or severely damaged the vast majority of Gaza’s housing, schools, hospitals, water systems and other basic civilian infrastructure. Nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s population – about 1.9 million people – has been displaced, many repeatedly, as bombardments move across the enclave. Meanwhile, Israeli forces and armed settlers have intensified raids, farmland seizures and sweeping movement restrictions across Palestinian communities in Jenin, Nablus, Hebron and the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.
By many accounts, Israel is carrying out a genocide.
Across the African continent, this grave assault carries profound historical resonance because organised sports competitions have often been inseparable from liberation struggles.
On June 16, 1976, 15-year-old Hastings Ndlovu joined thousands of schoolchildren in Soweto protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans language education. By the end of the day, he was dead, shot by police as officers opened fire on unarmed pupils marching through their own neighbourhoods.
Hastings was murdered by a regime that viewed African children as political threats rather than students or even human beings. Police killed 575 youths and injured thousands more that day, yet the bloodshed failed to disrupt diplomatic and sporting relations between the apartheid state and several Western allies.
Weeks later, as families buried their children in solemn funerals, New Zealand’s national rugby team, the All Blacks, landed at Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg on June 25, ready to play competitive matches inside the segregated republic.
The tour provoked fury among many young African governments. Within weeks, the backlash reached the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games in Canada. Twenty-two African countries withdrew after President Michael Morris and the International Olympic Committee chose not to act against New Zealand.
Athletes who had trained for years packed their bags and left the Olympic Village in Montreal, some after already competing. Morocco, Cameroon, Tunisia and Egypt began the Games before withdrawing as their delegations were urgently recalled by their governments.
Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia pulled out of the men’s football tournament, collapsing first-round fixtures at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium and Varsity Stadium mid-competition. Television viewers worldwide watched empty lanes and abandoned tracks replace what had been promoted as a global event. More than 700 athletes forfeited Olympic participation, including world-record holders Filbert Bayi (1,500 metres) of Tanzania and Uganda’s John Akii-Bua (400-metre hurdles).
African leaders recognised the scale of the decision. Nonetheless, they concluded that their countries’ Olympic participation would give “comfort and respectability to the South African racist regime and encourage it to continue to defy world opinion”.
That moment offers a defining lesson for 2026: Boycotts come at a cost. They demand sacrifice, coordination and political courage. History shows that collective refusal can redirect global attention and force both institutions and spectators to confront injustices they might otherwise overlook.
Nearly five decades later, Gaza presents a similar test amid a deepening and seemingly endless catastrophe.
Take what happened to Sidra Hassouna, a seven-year-old Palestinian girl from Rafah.
She was killed along with members of her family during an Israeli air strike on February 23, 2024, when the home they had sought shelter in was struck amid intense shelling in southern Gaza.
Sidra’s story mirrors thousands of others and reveals the same truth: childhoods erased by bombardment.
These killings have unfolded before a global audience. Unlike apartheid South Africa, Israel’s destruction of Gaza is being transmitted in real time, largely through Palestinian journalists and citizen reporters, nearly 300 of whom have been killed by Israeli air and artillery strikes.
At the same time, the US continues supplying Israel with weapons, diplomatic cover and veto protection at the United Nations. While Trump’s civil liberties abuses are serious, they are not comparable in scale to the devastation endured by Palestinians in Gaza.
The humanitarian toll is measured in destroyed hospitals, displaced families, enforced hunger and children buried beneath collapsed apartment blocks.
The central question now is whether football can present itself as a weeks-long celebration of sporting prowess across 16 host cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico from June to July while the United States continues to sustain large-scale civilian destruction abroad.
African political memory understands these stakes. The continent has witnessed how stadiums and international competitions can project political approval and how withdrawal can destroy that image.
A coordinated boycott would require joint decisions by governments representing the qualified teams – Morocco, Senegal, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cape Verde and South Africa – supported by the African Union, regional institutions and the Confederation of African Football.
The consequences would be immediate.
The tournament would lose its claim to global inclusivity, and corporate sponsors would be compelled to confront questions they have long avoided.
Most importantly, international attention would shift.
Boycotts do not end conflicts overnight. They accomplish something different: They remove the comfort of pretending injustice does not exist. The 1976 Olympic withdrawal did not dismantle apartheid instantly, but it accelerated isolation and broadened the universal coalition opposing it.
At present, FIFA’s longstanding political contradictions intensify the need for external pressure. At the World Cup draw in Washington, DC, on December 5, its president, Gianni Infantino, awarded Trump a “peace prize” for his efforts to “promote peace and unity around the world”.
The organisation cannot portray itself as a neutral body while extending symbolic legitimacy to a leader overseeing mass civilian death.
In that context, nonparticipation becomes a critical moral position.
It would not immediately end Gaza’s calamity, but it would challenge US support for the sustained military onslaught and honour children like Hastings and Sidra.
Although separated by decades and continents, their lives reveal a shared historical pattern: Children suffer first when imperial systems determine that Black and Brown lives hold absolutely no value.
Africa’s stand in 1976 reshaped international resistance to apartheid. A comparable decision in 2026 could strengthen opposition to contemporary systems of domination and signal to families in Gaza that their suffering is recognised across the continent.
History remembers those who reject injustice – and who choose comfort while children die under relentless air strikes and occupation.
If African teams compete in the 2026 World Cup as if nothing is happening in Gaza City, Rafah, Khan Younis, Jenin and Hebron, their involvement risks legitimising colonial power structures.
While European critics urge authorities to exclude the US, our history demands a complete withdrawal.
Football cannot be played on the graves of Palestinian martyrs.
Africa must boycott the 2026 World Cup.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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