The World Badminton Federation (BWF) made some changes to the rules of its council at the annual general meeting held virtually on July 18, 2020. The changes included gender and geographical representation equality in the council members and the duration of the President’s term.

The new changes ensure that at least 30 percent of each gender will be represented in the council and representatives from each continent will be selected. This new change is in accordance with the recommendations from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

BWF President Poul-Erik Høyer thanked the members for successfully holding a virtual annual meeting.

“Today we have made history by holding the first virtual annual meeting and I thank the members of the association and the voting delegation who participated in this meeting,” said Høyer.

“I want to congratulate the membership for passing the landmark vote to approve the constitutional change to ensure gender equality on the BWF council and for taking another important step to improve our governance practice by bringing in a vetting process for officials of the BWF,” he continued.

BWF is ranked third in terms of governance in the International Federation (IF) of The Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF).

Høyer said, “this is fantastic news for badminton that we are doing very well in this area… it’s a great sign for the future of badminton and I congratulate everyone on these outstanding results.”

The other change made on Saturday is limiting the term of office for the President to four terms. One term is four years.

The current president Poul-Erik Høyer is serving his second term as the President of BWF. He was first elected on 18 May 2013 and re-elected for the second term on 3 March 2017.