Risk Assessment – ICC Women’s U19 T20 World Cup, South Africa January 2023

Three ICC Events have been organised in three different competition categories in the last six months. Australia hosted the Men’s T20 World Cup in October-November 2022, followed by South Africa hosting the inaugural Women’s U19 T20 World Cup in January 2023 and the Women’s T20 World Cup in February 2023. Each event has a unique set of safeguarding risks; therefore, risk assessment and mitigation strategies are essential exercises before an event.

The Women’s U19 T20 World Cup is allocated the highest risk rating among all the ICC Events, as most playing participants are females under 18. Furthermore, the safeguarding risk rating elevates as players must travel abroad to compete in the world event. In addition, some members of the cohort have never experienced international travel and may not fully understand the dangers, culture, and etiquette in the host country. Therefore, two primary risks identified by the ICC were a) Physical safety and security during the event period and b) Safety from harassment and abuse at the event.

The physical safety of the teams was ensured through various mitigation strategies including, but not limited to:

1. Collaborations with local law enforcement and public authorities;
2. Trained and experienced security liaison officers allocated to each team;
3. Contractual commitments with private security companies for security cover at all venues and hotels;
4. Police escorts to cover identified local movements;
5. Daily security briefing with Event Security Lead to identify and resolve issues;
6. Share best practice literature with participants.

Similarly, efforts to ensure an environment safe from harassment and abuse was a joint effort by the ICC, LOC and participating Member countries, which included:

1. Appointing an Event Safeguarding Lead;
2. Implementating the ICC Safeguarding Regulations including pre-event awareness;
3. Setting standards with hotel and venue staff;
4. Identifying safeguarding point of contact within the team;
5. Member countries documenting and sharing with ICC their player welfare and safe living rules during the event;
6. Pre-Event education delivered to all participants to identify harassment & abuse and reporting mechanisms;
7. Availability of victim-centred legal, medical, and psychological support at the event.

The monitoring and evaluation process is critical to measuring the success of safeguarding mitigation at an event. As part of their role, the Event Security Lead and the Event Safeguarding Lead record, categorise, and document actions taken for all reported incidents throughout the event. The data collected will form the basis for numerical analysis for a particular event and offer the opportunity for comparative numerical analysis for a group of future events. It is prudent to note that lower numerical output does not mean better results. For example, ineffective pre-event communication of safeguarding cover and reporting mechanisms may prevent reporting from participants. Therefore, a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis is conducted for evaluation. The ICC will continue to use the learning and data collected via the monitoring process to assess risks and develop working strategies at future ICC events by creating policies and identifying options and contingencies to provide a safe environment to all participants.