Abstract

In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many international sports organisations banned not just athletes from representing Russia, but also their participation in the competitions. I examine the ethical justifiability of such individual-targeting sports sanctions through just war theory and consequentialism. I argue that just war theory judges such individual-targeting sports sanctions as ethically wrong for targeting athletes who are not agents of strategic threat, and for failing to minimise harm when feasible. I argue that consequentialism also judges such sanctions as wrong if quantitative empirical findings about economic sanctions were to be generalised to individual-targeting sports sanctions. When not referring to such evidence, consequentialism is either neutral about such sanctions, or unable to produce useful judgements due to empirical uncertainties. Based on the above considerations, we have stronger reasons to believe that such sanctions are wrong than otherwise.