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Development: when sport comes into play
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Interventions combining sport and development are more and more frequent. For David Blough, executive director, and Arnaud Roy, project assistant, of the NGO Play International, sport is a concrete tool for development, especially in education.

Since the early 2000s, an increasing number of educational and humanitarian operations have been using sport as a tool to meet development challenges. These “sport and development” operations continue to give rise to the same question: how can sport be an effective development tool? David Blough, Executive Director, and Arnaud Roy, projects assistant, of the NGO PLAY International, take a look at the origins of sport and development and the nature of the links between them.

Sport as a development tool: A history of recognition

Sport as a development tool draws on the utilitarian theory of sport by which playing sport is not the objective. All that matters is the effects it has on individuals, their relationship with society and on society itself. Based on this principle, sport is consequently not the end in itself, but a means. Back in 1896, the revival of the Olympic Games was justified by this same vision. The aim of the Olympic ideal upheld by Pierre de Coubertin is not simply to play sport: sport is a pretext for peace and solidarity between nations. However, it was not until the 1970s that a link was made between Olympism and development, thanks to UNESCO. Sport and the contributions it makes were subsequently included in the agency’s programmes in the context of its education prerogatives, but the turning point really came in 1971. The Second UN Development Decade placed the individual at the centre of development assistance. Governments committed to development and human dignity for all. This paradigm shift opened the door to using sport as a development tool.

UNESCO became a think tank on issues related to development through sport and sport as a development tool in 1958 with the creation of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education, which reports to it. For René Maheu, Director-General of UNESCO from 1961 to 1974, “All those who are working for the success of the Second United Nations Development Decade, the principal object of which is human resources, will need to take account of everything that sport can bring to progress in education, culture and social life”. Yet it was only in 2000, with the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that development through sport was recognised as being legitimate. For the first time, a special advisor on sport for development and peace, Adolf Ogi, was appointed to the services of the UN Secretary-General.

This legitimation by international institutions gave new impetus to international aid actors who use sport as a development tool. The sports-based approach is recognised as being conducive to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by NGOs and development institutions. In April 2017, 537 NGOs specialised in this field were listed on the website sportanddev.org, against 18 in 2000 (in Levermore and Beacom, Sport and Development, 2009).