Play the Game 2009 Conference

Last week I was in Coventry, UK, to present a paper at Play the Game 2009, one of the biggest communication conferences on sport and society, now at its 6th edition. It was a busy conference with many speakers coming from a very wide range of fields and institutions, starting from sports journalism up to the IOC, human rights advocacy groups and up to academia. 

I was part of the Beijing 2008: Business and Politics session sharing the floor with Joern Hansen, Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark, Anders Hasselgaard, Researcher at NUPI, and Rowan Simons, author of the recently published Bamboo Goalposts and Chairman of several sports organizations. The session covered rather different views on Beijing, from the influence of financial interests on awarding the Games to Beijing, the flaws of China’s system of sports governance to human rights discourse and the presence, campaigns and influence of human rights advocacy groups in Beijing last year. However, the difference in point of views led to a interesting and lively debate afterwards. 

Check out my presentation below:

IOCFDSP – Question for Mr. Verbruggen

Byron Peacock, a friend of mine and master’s student at the Graduate Institute of International and Development studies in Geneva gave me this in reaction to Mr Verbruggen intervention and speech earlier this morning. I am inserting here, without any changes, his comment and question. I have to say though, that due to Mr. Verburuggen’s other commitments and the need for him to leave before the session ended, this question was not asked in the room. 

Mr. Verbruggen, I feel that a legitimate question must be asked about the IOC’s repeated assertion that the practice of sport is a human right. Although sport is not recognized as a human right is any legally binding international instruments the IOC does depend on other human rights such as the right to private peaceable assembly, and the right to freedom of expression and we see how the IOC reacts when these rights are infringed as when it took action against Iraq last year and when it had to scramble immediately before the Beijing games last year when the freedom of expression was severely limited in contravention of Olympic standards. Although issues of human rights are admittedly very complex and I would agree that the IOC should make an effort to stay out of highly controversial political issues (since these are clearly not their areas of expertise or operation), how can the IOC advocate among governments that sport should be a human right if is no place for a human rights discourse in Olympism? I believe, for example, that President Rogge and former VP Pound have implied in interviews since the Beijing Games, that HR considerations will have to play a role in future Games. Is that a possible future for the IOC?

IOCFSPD – session 5 – keynote

Two keynote addresses and three presentations scheduled, one of which being introduced the last minute. 

The session starts with Hein Verbruggen, President of the General Association of International Sports Federations and former Chairman of the Coordination of the Coordination Commission of the Beijing Olympic Games. He started speaking about legacy part of the DNA of the Olympic Brand  saying that “once an Olympic city, always an Olympic city”. He added that the values of excellence, friendship and respect are part of the Olympic DNA. 

The legacy starts now from the moment the mandate of a city begins – from the preparation to the plans a city makes to have everything that it builds for the Olympics to be sustainable afterwards. 

Legacy doesn’t have to be limited however to economy and physical education. He continued by giving the example of Beijing and the great opportunity it gave to 1/5 of humanity to meet and experience the Olympic values; the IOC tries to make a better world by trying the disseminate the Olympic values striving to promote a peaceful society. The IOC ideals are based on classical ideas – courage, dedicated, character, loyalty – and with them in mind the IOC is striving the organize the Olympic Games.He then continued, to the surprise of some in the room and to mine as well, saying that the IOC’s mission therefore is not to promote human rights development per se but rather a peaceful society. He quoted article 2 of the Olympic Charter, where it is said that the aim of Olympism is to have human dignity preserved through sport, arguing that some human rights advocacy groups have intentionally misinterpreted IOC mission accusing it for not taking action in human rights issues. The IOC activity he said is not based on individual rights nor on something written in a universal declaration. The Olympic Games are not only meant to showcase athletic ability but also to come diminish differences. Therefore, the IOC wants to promote and create a legacy for people. While the IOC accepts other groups views, including that of advocacy groups, they should not misinterpret IOC’s mission and accept IOC view as well. 

He concluded by saying that the IOC is not a political organization although it works with politicians. It does that because they are needed to support the IOC cause and mission.

His final word was about the Beijing Games couldn’t have been true People’s Games wihtout including everyone. With the Paralympic Games this was succeded.  

Tessa Jowell, Minister for the Olympics, Cabinet Office of the UK Government. Are we responding to the challenges of today by modifying and changing the challenges of yesterday. Her speech is about the London 2012 Olympic legacy.

The ambition of holding the Games comes with unprecedented investments in schools and into making children more physically active. Now 4+million more children are active compared to 2002. She mentions the programs meant to support creating a sport leading nations by offering free swimming to over 60s and reduced price swimming to those under 15. All this is for better health and an extended life expectancy. Partnerships to empower people through sport (in and beyond the UK) are also organized.  

She also mentioned efforts for developing teaching and systematic approach towards breaking the barriers of participation. Most of her examples now concentrate on the UK initiatives to promote sport for everyone in and out the UK. She is therefore happy that the UN is endorsing the IOC and each Games edition. 

Her thoughts are that the UN agencies and IOC should work together in coordinating and mobilizing NOCs to push the Millenium promise. 

Mario Pescante, Former President of the Italian Oltympic Committee and IOC member, follows speaking about the young generation and their “anti” attitude by default, implying that might be even  against meetings promoting peace and international cooperation. However, he says, this is a small group. The modern society has therefore a total lack of values and it’s not that the values lost significance but they dropped significantly in importance. The IOC needs to convince those in charge with education that sport can give youth positive ideas, that sport as much as Olympism represent one great experience that provides a positive living (the right living) model. Sport, he says, teaches great lessons about how to handle both the glory of winning and the pain of loosing. Furthermore, sports teaches that there are no limits but only adversaries. It teaches people to work towards a common good rather than supporting individualism – what about athletism where each sportsman competes for his own gain? His speech finished by calling on the power of Olympism and their power to inspire as well as on a higher involvement of everyone in promoting such ideals and making the world a global village, as peaceful and great as the Olympic village.

Ser Miang Ng, IOC Member, speaks now about the Singapore Youth Olympic Games and their way of aiming to tackle societal issues of young generations by making them the better citizens of tomorrow. A cultural and education programme that includes a variety of activities, healthy-living included, was launched. Among the issues faced by youth in the world he enumerated health, leisure time, environment, youth participation in society, globalisation and infocomm technology. His take on infocomm as he call it is the threat of youth being socially alienated. 

The Young Olympic Games could therefore “help create a supportive environment, give youth support and opportunities to plant a stake and have a say”. Young people will not only be encouraged to participate and compete in sports but also to get involved with presenting, reporting, covering the sports as well. 

He continues by giving some examples of connecting youths programmes that the YOG organizers launched: the Olympic Education Programme asnthe Friends@YOG which is a school-NOC twinning programme. 

The Virtual Torch Relay was inspired by a group of local students and encourages youths to live the Olympic values by also letting them know that the can make a difference. The torch relay will take place online since the YOG cannot (as in not allowed or don’t have the funds to?) organize a real torch relay. It is definitely a new way for the IOC to engage with new media. 

He closes his presentation with a picture of children surrounding the YOG Logo made out my shoes they donated.

The final presentation of the session is given by Markus Pilgrim, Manager of The Youth Employment Netlog (YEN) is supposed to talk about the capitalizing on the Olympic Games’ volunteers. He, however, changed his mind saying that the OCOGs (organizing committees) are already doing a lot in that direction. He has a recommendation though to have OCOGs to offer complementary training and complementary placement service. 

His presentation will be therefore on how to use sport to create jobs. The YEN focuses on Africa since it’s a young continent, 2/3 of the population being under 25 years-old. YEN works with UN funding. Based on his latest work he is launching a special call for proposal and sports and youth employment.

One World Romania

These days the Czech Centre Bucharest with the help of volunteers and in partnership with One World Prague are organizing in Bucharest, Romania a film festival showcasing more than 40 documentaries from 20 countries. The festival is centered around some thematical programs including globalization in actions, quest of identity, dictatorships of the 21st century, women’s right and religious freedoms, and the rights and protection of children. The documentaries are going to be shown in 5 location across Bucharest, several debates being also scheduled. 

While films about East-European countries and their way of coping with post-communism are not a surprise, the film festival reaches out to countries and areas beyond the European borders (Cuba, China, Burma, USA or Venezuela).

You can read more about the festival here or follow closely the development of the event on the festival’s blog.

Finally, a word from the organizers (from their email notice): 

“We hope to provide a more complex and balanced information on the issue of human rights and offer the possibility of a better understanding of the importance and of the connections between foreign political and social themes. Furthermore, we wish to contribute in this way to the public debate on the role that Romanian citizens and Romania can and should have in a globally interconnected world, the world which we live in.

We wish that our initiative will find a good, open-minded public and the festival increases the degree of awareness at a social level, favoring the positive effects in the public life.”

Picidae – Journey to the end of the Internet

A friend of mine sent me today this link. It is a project developed by two Berliners aimed to help people accessing the Internet from highly monitored/firewalled/secured locations visualize websites that are normally forbidden. Their project and the way they present it is highly humanitarian and works for giving Internet users access to a non-censored Internet by tricking the firewall system by allowing the user to connect to an outside proxy or server. They say that tested their idea in the heart of Beijing accessing “forbidden” websites in plain daylight and from public Internet Cafes.

According to the authors, when accessing an unauthorized website in countries with high Internet censorship a message signaling a network problem will be shown. What the user has to do then is to invoke the pici-server and fill in the same web address that was reported as unreachable. “The pici-server then creates an image of that website and sends this back. To make surfing on that image possible, pici-server analyses the web site and puts links via image maps onto the image where they can be seen on the web site. So one can click in the web browser with the mouse onto the links like on the “true” web page.”

I wonder what the Chinese Virtual Policeforce (see some posts ago) said to this?

For more info check: http://www.picidae.net/.