Auckland, New Zealand — 23 May 2026 · ONOC Media

The 2026 Oceania Athletes' Forum closed its final day on Saturday with a powerful call to action on safeguarding in sport, as Roshika Deo delivered one of the most significant sessions of the three-day programme. The session, held at the Hilton Auckland, formed part of the 2026 ONOC XLVI Annual General Assembly Week and marked the culmination of a forum built around the theme of moving from inspiration to action.

Roshika Deo, Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion and Safeguarding Advisor with Team Up — an Australian Government Sport for Development programme — brought foundational safeguarding concepts to life for athlete commissioners from across Oceania. With around half the room having never attended a safeguarding workshop, she grounded the session in practical, Pacific-relevant examples drawn from years of frontline experience.

She opened by clarifying what safeguarding in sport actually means: not accidental injuries on the field, but non-accidental harm intentionally inflicted or unknowingly permitted by someone in a position of power, authority, or trust. The four broad categories she outlined were neglect, abuse, violence, and exploitation, covering everything from educational and emotional neglect to technology-facilitated violence and grooming. On online harm, Deo noted it is one of the fastest-growing safeguarding issues in the Pacific, with social media regularly used to perpetrate harassment, sexual threats, and discrimination against athletes, referees, and coaches alike.

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“Grooming can take two or three years, and because it can look consensual on the outside, it becomes very hard to address, especially when it's so normalised in some communities.” — Roshika Deo, Safeguarding Advisor, Team Up

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Deo drew on the Palau 2025 Pacific Mini Games as a landmark example, where a formal safeguarding programme was implemented for the first time at scale at a Pacific Games event. Reports received throughout the games made clear that safeguarding concerns are a real and present reality in Pacific sport, and she emphasised that what was reported likely represented only a portion of what occurred.

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“These things take time to build trust. There would have been many more incidents that simply didn't get reported.” — Roshika Deo, Team Up

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A central highlight of the session was the formal introduction of the Safeguarding at Major Sporting Events Toolkit, developed by Team Up under Deo's leadership and published in April 2026. The toolkit took three years to produce, informed by safeguarding champions at the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023, the Solomon Islands 2023 Pacific Games, and the Palau 2025 Pacific Mini Games, as well as 80 Pacific participants from eleven countries at the regional safeguarding workshop in Nadi in September 2025. It was developed in collaboration with the Oceania Impact Network, which brings together Team Up, the IOC through its Olympism365 and Solidarity programmes, UN Women, and the ONOC Equity Commission.

Designed specifically for the Pacific context, the toolkit acknowledges that sport governance in the region is shaped by community structures, cultural norms, respect hierarchies, and limited resources, making a one-size-fits-all approach unworkable. It is guided by seven core principles: do no harm, a survivor-centred approach, a trauma-informed approach, duty of care, the best interests of the child, accountability, and data protection and confidentiality. Practically, it gives sporting bodies tools including safeguarding risk assessments, accommodation and transport guidelines, codes of conduct, consent frameworks, and reporting and referral processes — intended for use by Pacific Games organising committees, NOCs, national sports federations, and regional bodies.

Deo closed by turning directly to the athlete commissioners in the room, urging them to leverage the unique trust and authority they hold within their NOCs — to make safeguarding a standing part of every conversation, to demand that policies are not just written but implemented, and to lead by example in their own conduct and communities.

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“Demand accountability. You have the trust, you have the voice, and you have the lived experience. Working together or individually, that is how the change will happen.” — Roshika Deo, Team Up