Further towards the right to ‘safe leisure’: a case study of the Council of Europe’s 2016 Saint-Denis Convention

Abstract

In the context of the right to leisure–enshrined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)–this article addresses how the Council of Europe’s (2016) Convention on an ‘Integrated Safety, Security and Service Approach at Football Matches and Other Sports Events’ (‘Saint-Denis Convention’) provides a legal pathway towards what we conceptualize here as the right to ‘safe leisure’. This right to ‘safe leisure’, we locate within broader right to leisure discourses which this article reconsiders. We contend that the Convention has wider ramifications for the intersection between human rights and leisure and that the Convention’s potential resides in the fact that it enhances the existing and orthodox conceptualizations of leisure. Following an unpacking and operationalization of the right to leisure, this conceptual article then showcases how the 2016 Convention enshrines distinct duties and obligations which establish a clear right to ‘safe leisure’ within a significant realm of leisure life.