The fairplay initiative plays a pioneering role in linking soccer and development education and public relations work. The first dialogue forum "Sport and Development" in 2006 laid the foundation for a systematic examination of this innovative complex of topics.

Since then, the field of sport and development has expanded to include human rights. Human rights, as the inalienable rights of every single individual, are becoming an ever more present topic - especially in the context of major sporting events. Therefore, the networking project "Nosso Jogo" (Our Game) was carried out around the FIFA World Cup 2014 and the Olympic Games 2016 in Brazil with the support of the Austrian Development Cooperation, and "Our Game" in the context of the Football World Cup in Russia.

In order to address the realization of human rights at the association level, but also at the everyday club level, the AG Sport und Menschenrechte (Working Group on Sport and Human Rights) was founded by the Ministry of Sport in 2015, which is coordinated by fairplay.

With the project "Sport for Development and Human Rights", the relationship between sport, development and Human Rights has been communicated to a broad public since 2019.