Morocco Safely Stages Long-Delayed Handball Congress

(ATR) The XXXIII Ordinary Congress of the International Handball Federation welcomed 14 new nations – for a total of 180 members – and officially authorized President Hassan Moustafa to work full-time for the organization during its gathering last week in Marrakech, Morocco.

In another decision, the IHF Secretary General was dropped from the Executive Committee, which will still consist of five members.

The Congress discussed proposals for by-law changes that were made about 18 months ago. It was delayed a year when the volcanic eruption that spread ash over Europe cancelled its Rome meeting in April 2010, then was again jeopardized when a terrorist explosion killed 16 people in a popular café overlooking the Marrakech main square on April 29. There were no further incidents and the Moroccan minister of internal affairs monitored the security of the delegates at the Royal Mirage Hotel, according to the IHF.

Some of the by-law proposals regarded strengthening the role of Moustafa.

"The IHF President is a full-time president," IHF media officer Mona Orban tells Around the Rings. "Unfortunately we cannot make the salary public."

However, Christer Ahl, formerly a high-ranking IHF official and a leading critic of the federation, wrote that proposals for by-law changes "were essentially rejected on those points" that would have centralized more power with the IHF "at the expense of other stakeholders and/or to give the President more personal power and authority."

In a statement, Moustafa praised the "democratic course" of the meeting and said, "We were successful in recent years, but have still not reached our goal yet. I think we are in the middle of the road. But we will continue to do everything for the development of handball."

In his opening remarks to the Congress, Moustafa described handball as "a diamond, which should be polished, in order to become brilliant, but we still have a lot of work to do."

In other action, the IHF Council informed the Congress about the new Ethics Code and Regulations for Players' Agents.

Changes were made to the eligibility code and for transfers between nations.

"The new text is clear, understandable and leaves no space for misinterpretation," Orban says. "The IHF has now also made a clear definition of what is an amateur and what is a professional player. The debatable 7.3.c) clause about national team players has been removed, and a special clause regarding players with multiple nationalities has been introduced. Some points previously belonging to the Eligibility Code were moved to the Transfer Regulations and vice versa where they would naturally belong. In the Transfer Regulations the main change is to provide better service for the national federations; the IHF now has to approve every single transfer being made, thus enriching the information and the data for all players worldwide."

She says another important point is the inclusion of Education Compensation as a tool for supporting clubs which have good programs on youth levels.

The 14 new members are Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Laos, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Solomon Islands.

Steve Pastorino, general manager of USA Team Handball, tells ATR that his federation has received no formal communication about what happened in Marrakech.

"From what I understand, it doesn't appear that there were dramatic changes or any significant progress in the structure of the IHF," says Pastorino, who stayed in the United States to focus on the national championships and other obligations.

"If that is the case that Moustafa is now an employee of the IHF, I think that is probably a step in the right direction. Because clearly someone in that position needs some means to execute his duties and be a champion of our sport, and in his previous voluntary capacity that was challenging for him."

The Congress also awarded several championships, focusing on a region of the world that is a hotbed for handball: the 2012 Women's Youth World Championship to Montenegro, the 2013 Men's Junior World Championship to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 2014 Women's Junior World Championship to Croatia and the 2014 Women's Youth World Championship to Macedonia.

Qatar, which will organize the 2015 Men's World Championship, will also host the XXXIV Ordinary IHF Congress in 2013. Croatia and Norway also bid.

Written by Karen Rosen.