Her Space with Bridget: This World Cup in 3 parts: borders, debts, referees

…Immigration, unpaid debts, and women referees are shaping the first 48-team World Cup.

This World Cup is barely a week old, and it has already produced a visa dispute that reopened a global debate on impunity for sexual violence, a stadium ban tied to unpaid child support, and a record number of women in the referee’s middle. Three storylines, gathered here because each one says something about where women stand in the world’s biggest tournament, whether the subject is violence, money, or simply who gets to officiate the match.

Thomas Partey and Canada’s visa refusal

Thomas Partey did not play in Ghana’s World Cup opener against Panama in Toronto on Wednesday. Canada refused his entry visa, citing the criminal charges he faces in the United Kingdom. Here is what has actually happened, what Canadian law says, and what is still unresolved.

Partey was charged by London’s Metropolitan Police in July 2025 with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault relating to three women over alleged incidents between 2021 and 2022 while he played for Arsenal. In February 2026, police brought two further rape charges relating to a fourth woman, over an alleged incident in December 2020. In total, he now faces seven counts of rape and one count of sexual assault involving four women.

Partey has pleaded not guilty to all nine charges. He is on bail, on condition that he does not contact the women involved. His trial, originally due to start in November 2026 at Southwark Crown Court, has been pushed to June 2027; the presiding judge pointed to the volume of cases already waiting to be heard, and noted that defendants on bail are scheduled behind those held in custody. He left Arsenal when his contract expired at the end of June 2025, four days before the charges were announced, and signed for Villarreal in Spain the following month.

Canada’s decision rests on a specific provision. Under section 36(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, a foreign national can be ruled inadmissible over an act allegedly committed outside Canada, provided that act would amount to an offence carrying a maximum sentence of ten years or more if it had occurred in Canada. No conviction is required for this section to apply, only an immigration officer’s assessment of the evidence available.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said hosting the World Cup does not change the country’s immigration law, and that every applicant is assessed individually. The United States, reviewing the same underlying case, had already issued Partey a visa earlier in June; US Customs and Border Protection said he had been inspected and admitted because he has not been convicted of any crime, and that it defers to Canada on its own immigration decision. In practice, this means Partey holds a valid US visa, while being specifically barred from Canadian territory under Canadian law alone.

Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally protested the decision on June 13, describing it as “high handed and extremely unfair”, and Ghana’s coach, Carlos Queiroz, cited the presumption of innocence when explaining Partey’s selection for the squad. Ghana has also pursued a legal challenge: a Federal Court judge in Ottawa heard an injunction application today, June 16, seeking to overturn the refusal in time for Wednesday’s match. Justice Roger R. Lafrenière rejected Thomas Partey’s appeal to enter the country after the Ghana midfielder was denied entry for the World Cup. Partey, however, remains eligible to play Ghana’s remaining group matches against England in Boston on June 23 and Croatia in Philadelphia on June 27, both on US soil.

Morocco’s Achraf Hakimi is also facing a rape-related case in France, opened in 2023, and is awaiting trial in Paris. He has not been reported to face any travel restriction at this World Cup, and the contrast with Partey has driven much of the online debate, with some commentators calling it inconsistent, or evidence of bias against African players. The more immediate explanation is geographic rather than reputational: Hakimi’s group matches are being played on US soil, so the specific Canadian provision used against Partey has not yet been tested in his case.

Kylian Mbappé’s name has also circulated in the same conversation online. For the record, Mbappé was investigated over an alleged rape in Stockholm in 2024; Swedish prosecutors closed that investigation in December of that year, citing insufficient evidence, and no charges were ever filed. That is a different legal position from Partey’s or Hakimi’s, both of whom are facing live charges before a court.

Separately, The Times has reported that England’s Football Association is weighing whether its players will follow the customary pre-match handshake with Partey ahead of the June 23 fixture. Two of the four Arsenal players in England’s squad, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka, were former teammates of his. Ghana’s Football Association has dismissed the reports as “mind games”, saying the matter is one for FIFA rather than Ghana.

This is not the first organised criticism Partey’s case has drawn. After he was charged in July 2025, the fan led group Arsenal Supporters Against Sexual Violence criticised the club for continuing to select him after one of the women told the club of her allegations in 2021 and after his arrest in 2022, saying members were “devastated and ashamed” that survivors had been failed. One of the women who came forward told The Athletic that online abuse intensified whenever Partey played and scored, including death threats and rape threats directed at her.

What equality now and UN women say about rape cases

Cases like Partey’s tend to dominate headlines, but Equality Now has argued that public attention to sexual violence spikes mostly around high profile cases involving powerful men, while the much larger, everyday scale of the problem gets far less attention. The organisation’s view is that treating each case as an isolated incident, rather than as part of a wider pattern, is itself part of why so many perpetrators are never held to account.

UN Women puts the global figure at 840 million women, almost one in three of all women aged 15 and over, who have experienced physical or sexual violence at least once in their life.

Equality Now’s research across the continent, set out in its 2025 report Barriers to Justice: Rape in Africa, found that 25 of 47 African countries studied still have rape laws narrow enough to leave survivors without real recourse; some legal systems still let a rapist avoid prosecution by marrying his victim or reaching an informal settlement with her family.

In England and Wales, the jurisdiction where Partey’s case is being heard, only about 2.8% of rapes recorded by police led to a charge in the year to March 2025. The Crown Prosecution Service’s own figures show the conviction rate for completed rape prosecutions reached 63.4% by the end of 2025, its highest point in a decade, which still means well over a third end without one. None of this is a comment on any individual case; it is simply the system that any rape charge, against anyone, currently moves through.

Argentina bars unpaid child support debtors from World Cup stadiums

Separately, and for an entirely different reason, Argentina has shared a list of roughly 13,000 parents with confirmed, court ordered child support debts with US authorities, ahead of Argentina’s three group matches in the United States. Anyone on the list can be refused entry to the stadium.

The measure extends Tribuna Segura, or Safe Stands, a Buenos Aires programme that has been used since March 2025 to keep people with arrest warrants, stadium bans or unpaid child support out of grounds at home; officials say 162 people have already been turned away domestically under the policy.

Buenos Aires mayor Jorge Macri has framed the policy in blunt terms: a parent who has not met a court ordered duty to their child should not get a seat to watch the team. Anyone on the list can still buy a ticket once they settle the debt; the measure targets debts a court has already confirmed, not new allegations.

The good news: women making history at this World Cup

This tournament has the largest group of women match officials a men’s World Cup has ever had: six among the 52 referees selected. American referee Tori Penso and Mexico’s Katia García are both taking charge of matches as lead, centre referees, the first woman from each country to do so at a men’s World Cup. Brooke Mayo, Kathryn Nesbitt, and Sandra Ramirez complete the all-woman assistant trio, while Tatiana Guzman, already the first woman to referee a men’s first division match in Nicaragua, takes the video match official role. It follows Stéphanie Frappart’s history making appointment as the first woman to referee a men’s World Cup match outright, at Qatar in 2022.

Of the 170 match officials FIFA has named for this tournament, only six are women. That is nowhere near enough, but it is still worth celebrating.

UN Women has used the tournament to make a wider point. In a public statement timed to the World Cup, the agency noted that this is the first 48 team tournament in history, projected to draw six billion viewers worldwide and more than 2.8 billion dollars in sponsorship revenue, while women hold just over 32% of executive positions across international sports federations and make up only around 5% of registered football coaches globally. The agency’s argument is that a platform this large, if used deliberately, is one of the most powerful tools available for shifting attitudes on gender equality.

On a more practical note, the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, working with host cities and civil society groups, has published a directory of fan support resources and hotlines covering all 16 World Cup host cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico, including a dedicated section on support for gender-based violence.

None of this closes the gap UN Women points to in its own statement; coaching and boardroom numbers remain low. But for a tournament that will be watched by a sizeable share of the planet, having women in the referee’s middle, and clear local support routes in place, is itself a marker of how far the game has moved, even as the bigger questions remain unresolved.

Three storylines, three different parts of the world, and a tournament still in its first week. There is a lot left to play, on the pitch and off it.

Bridget Mensah believes the right story, told well, can change everything. A communications strategist and gender equality advocate with 10 years in Ghana’s media industry, she uses words as tools for accountability and amplification particularly for women. She leads communications for the Network of Women in Broadcasting (NOWIB), and the Head of Corporate Affairs at Ghana Digital Centres Ltd, (GDCL)

[email protected]

The post Her Space with Bridget: This World Cup in 3 parts: borders, debts, referees appeared first on The Business & Financial Times.

Read Full Story