Purpose

This World Anti-Doping Program is a complex set of standard form agreements which Signatories adopt to provide a comprehensive anti-doping regime. The Program has the aim of protecting athletes' fundamental right to participate in doping-free sport and promoting health, fairness and equality for athletes worldwide, and ensuring harmonised, coordinated and effective anti-doping programmes, at the international and national level, with regard to detection, deterrence and prevention of doping. While functioning as a result of the voluntary agreement of Signatories, the Code can be described as a kind of international law of sport in the anti-doping area.

While they operate in a different sphere of activity, the Code (and Program) functions in much the same way as voluntary international instruments in areas such as international trade or commerce. The voluntary rules which govern the operation of bankers' documentary credits and the conventions which govern the carriage of goods by sea are good examples. The Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits functions by agreement or incorporation, and might, like the Code, be described as a body of ‘soft’ international law which has been generally adopted so as to bring about a common approach in a particular area of activity. In the case of the Code, the aim is to provide a common, harmonised approach to the regulation of doping in sport.

The parts of the Code

The Code is made up of four parts.