ITF’s independent arbitration under the umbrella of CAS

ITF’s independent arbitration under the umbrella of CAS

The International Taekwon-Do Federation was originally founded in 1966 in Seoul. Since then and over time, the ITF moved its headquarter together with the legal registration to a few countries. The most recent move was decided in the ITF General Assembly on 3 October, 2022, moving the ITF to Lausanne, Switzerland, coming into force on 1 January 1. Together with the move, new statutes were approved replacing all previous texts.  

One element of the new statutes was standing out: the clear intention of fostering friendly relations and working to resolve disputes between its members and the different bodies through which they relate. And Lausanne with its many international sports federations such as the IOC and the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) was not an arbitrary choice either.  

In retrospect, with the increase of professionalization in sports as well as international disputes related to sport and the absence of a specialized competent authority, in 1981, shortly after his election as president of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch had the idea of creating a specific jurisdiction for sport. A year later, at the IOC session in Rome, one of its members, Judge Kéba Mbaye, then a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, chaired a working group charged with preparing the statutes of what quickly would become the "Court of Arbitration for Sports".

In this way, the International Taekwon-Do Federation recognises the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) to resolve any type of dispute that affects the relations between its members. The ITF clarifies that it will only intervene in its capacity as an ordinary arbitration court if the dispute does not fall under the jurisdiction of an ITF body.