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Governing sport for development and peace
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Mainstreaming sports for peace and development should be a top priority, but there is an urgent need to rethink the way this sector is managed and administrated.

I have been always very enthusiastic about writing on sports for peace and development but this time, I have to admit that I am doing it a bit with some reluctance.

It is not that I lost my enthusiasm and interest for this promising area, an area that I still believe should be promoted with the overall ambition of radically transforming sports as a whole.

Mainstreaming sports for peace and development should be a top priority, but as I have argued before, there is an urgent need to rethink the ways this area is being managed and administrated.

First of all, a caveat – my focus and perspective is driven by my own experience on the field in a developing and emerging nation like Nepal, but possibly my propositions could relate and connect with the wider audience.

I am writing this piece as a contribution that I do hope will help “shake” the foundations, the existing pillars upon which sports for peace and development is now based on. They are now very fragile and they seriously need attention.

First of all we need a global architecture that promotes sports for peace and development. In the past months there have been some consultations being promoted by the UN, but it is clear to me that such effort, while important, was too narrowly focused and possibly a bit too elitist.

I did not see any broader attempt at truly engaging the wider community, those practitioners, the athletes and the beneficiaries on the ground that, day in and day out, do shape the movement.

Perhaps I am too optimistically talking about movements here.

While there is no doubt that there is one behind the entire area of sports for peace and development, it is too fragmented and uncoordinated. Ideally, again let’s not forget the experiences that are shaping my thoughts here, the UN should play a key role in coordinating and boosting sports for peace and development. UNESCO, perhaps, should assume a role of a technical agency who provides backup support to all the UN ecosystem, all the agencies and programs that are active in a given nation.

The truth is that this is not happening and the UN system – while admirable on many fronts and while doing a lot of good work on the field, is unable to do so.

During the recent consultations organized by DESA that brought together a series of experts from all over the world, I did not see any genuine efforts to go beyond the usual talks and to really try to address the governance issue that affects sports for peace and development.

Why could not such gathering have been followed up by a series of discussions with practitioners and athletes and beneficiaries? Such a process would have given legitimacy and ownership to any attempts of reform.

There is no doubt that we need the guidance of experts, but then we also need to democratize the entire field and give voice back to the practitioners and athletes on the ground.

The following could be some key framing questions that could help such conversation:

  • How can we truly create a community of practitioners that could become the backbone of a global movement supporting sports for peace and development?
  • How can we imagine a global governance, a bottom-up structure that could truly ensure the expansion of this area expands and its slow “conquest” of the other domains of sports industry, ensuring, finally, a true mainstreaming?
  • Who could become the global champions of such efforts?
  • How could a platform like sportanddev become not only a source of good practices and megaphone for positive promotion, but also a place where decision making can happen or as a minimum, can be at least discussed?

Perhaps, the last of the above questions is the most daunting, but also the most intriguing one, because big international organizations should support rather than manage or coordinate the movement.

That’s why the function and the ambitions of sportanddev could be radically reimagined as a place of dialogue and decision making.

While solutions and propositions should come up from the bottom and through a serious process of discussions and deliberations, here some suggestions that could help further the debate.

First, sport for peace and development should be included in the wider reform plans of the Secretary General of the United Nations that come under the umbrella of Our Common Agenda. This decision would give relevance and importance to the sector, bringing it attention and focus.

The upcoming Secretary General Report on Sport for Development and Peace that will be submitted to the UN General Assembly in September should be focused on offering a pathway to radically transform the whole sports sector. With a lot of imagination and determination, the sports industries could come together and espouse the overarching goals of embracing sports for the good.

Perhaps we should even dare to stop calling ourselves practitioners of sports for peace and development.

The bottom line is that the whole sport sector, in its entirety, should be reframed as “sport for good” in which private, commercial businesses (leagues, federations) co-exist and work together with a myriad of not-for-profits and social businesses that right now are at the core of the sports for peace and development movement.

I imagine a global forum in which these practitioners can gather annually to plan and discuss with their peers from the sports industries ways to transform sports.

We could have a global sport for good action plan, not something just embraced by government representatives, but something that comes out of a true, frank and, most importantly, participatory discussions that originates at the bottom.

Such a plan could be revised every year in a special summit, which could be organized on the occasion of the annual meeting of the General Assembly in September. This could be a way that global leaders can also assume the responsibility and act as “guarantors” for the action plan.

This could be in the form of a forum that could be backed up by a global commission for sport for good.

This commission should be lean and made up by people who are action-oriented and results driven, and they should represent both the sports industries, for example the major sports leagues, but also practitioners and governments as well.

A platform like sportanddev could be boosted and upgraded from a space to share news, events and best practices to a place where people meet, discuss and take decisions that could guide the work of the global commission. Perhaps sportanddev could become a sort of global “parliament” that could work along the global commission and its secretariat, the executive body of the sport for good movement.

If talking about setting up a new parliament is too strong and political, let’s call it the “Global Agora for Sport for Good.”

I still believe that there is a tremendous role that the UN can play, but we need to rethink about the way we can better leverage its extraordinary convening powers. Ideally the UN system could act as an enabler and broker, but then we need to have some structure in place where people can talk, discuss, and decide.

That’s why the debate and decision making platform and the executive body should remain out of the formal mechanisms of the UN.

I am fully aware that many of these propositions might be seen as too provocative and each of them deserves serious thoughts and considerations. Yet, it can be a starting point to re-imagine a niche and turn into a full movement that is contagious and truly transforms sports in a force for the good – for real!

 

​​​​​_____________________________________________________________________________

Simone Galimberti is the co-founder of ENGAGE. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Co-Founder, ENGAGE

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