IOCFSPD – report of rapporteurs and closing session

 

The report is based on the presentations, speeches and keynote addresses given yesterday and today. Lord Colin Moynihan is now reading some ideas from Jacques Rogge’s, IOC President, address from yesterday and it looks like he’ll continue to summarize the presentations of yesterday, or at lest that he was made responsible to report on. He is reviewing also the questions posed during the sessions. 

Patrick Bauman, from Switzerland, is now giving his review, starting with Frankie Fredericks presentation from yesterday. 

It is often stressed, as in the days and hours before, the positive example that sport provides and the dangers of inactive youth highlighted by reminding some of the alarming data from the WHO presentation. Dr Talbot’s presentation is again addressed, after Lord Moynihan just mentioned through a joke that he didn’t agree with it, making me think that the issue of gender and sex stereotyping in the world of sports although told me dealt with without discrimination is still rather a taboo. 

Lord Moynihan now started to speak again reviewing the morning talks. Mr Verbruggen’s keynote is mentioned for its ideas on legacy and the IOCs need to engage and collaborate with political bodies and figures to help IOCs mission but no word is said about Verburggen’s mention that certain NGO, pushing their agenda, tried to make the IOC accountable for human rights issues around the world. 

Erica Terpstra, chair of this morning’s session on legacy and education, is speaking now about the other great speakers from her panel: Mario Pescante, Ser Miang Ng and Markus Pilgrim concluding that the meetings these days were a call to action.

Mr Bauman now continues summarizing the last session, the one I missed due to another commitment, that was about capitalizing on partnerships and networking.Political nationalism may sometime be excessive but unavoidable in the Olympic Games, according to Yasushi Akashi, former UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and now Chairman of the Japan Centre for Conflict Prevention. Other presentations focused o the aid for development through sport, two speakers bring relatively different views – Dr Pal Schmidt, IOC Vice-President and EU Parliament member bringing the Eu view while Mr Subramonia Anathakrishnan, Chief of Partners and Youth Branch of UN-Habitat bringing the UN-habitat view. The last presentation of the last session was given by Christopher Lamb, Special Adviser, International Relations, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He advised checking the content and motivation of the partners and not be content only with the memos and partnerships signed. 

Many examples from and related to African countries were given throughout the days making me think that Africa as a general topic is increasingly important for the IOC and probably becoming as much of a focus as the dramatic decrease of involvement in physical activities by youths. 

The recommendations, some of them, presented by Lord Moyniham, are therefore as follows:

1. stress the importance of the first ever holding of this forum – emphasize that sport has the power to enhance peace building 

2. the Olympic Movement (OM) and its partners cooperate whenever possible to use sport to overcome increasing problems of this world 

4. the OM will use its influence to political influence to promote peace 

5. OM supports dialogue between nations and individuals and strive to achieve dignity for all individual and people

6. seek  to promote equal opportunities for women as a fundamental human right

7. the OM should strive to achieve peace through the works of the Olympic Truce 

12. this first forum, should be the first step towards future addition of other such meetings not further than two years apart

These, and the other recommendations, were approved by applause by those in the room.  

 

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.

IOCFSPD – session 4 – keynote and presentations

The session’s presentations are brought together but an interest into and relevancy to promotion of education and healthy life-styles through sport. 

Frankie Fredericks, Chairman of the IOCs Athletes’ Commission, had the keynote address. He shared a lot of his personal experiences stressing the importance of sport as a “school for friendship, solidarity, fair-play”.

VANOC CEO, John Furlong continues the session with his presentation about VANOC’s 2010 way of reaching youth by reaching them online through the classroom – the programme offers teachers with lesson plans and gives children a change to engage directly with the Olympic Games and share the Olympic Dream. Olympic Athletes join the classrooms and gyms as well inspiring youth. I remember hearing about these initiatives two years ago when at the National Olympic Academy organized by the British Academy in London and found them then, as now, as a new approach to a traditional method of bringing youth to engage with sports by mediating their contact with Olympic heroes. He now brought the example of the Olympic Torch Relay which will cover 45,000 km in Canada next year. Coca-Cola and Royal Bank are sponsors of parts of the relay. To be part of it, young people are encouraged to have a healthy life-style (Coca-Cola) by joining their programme and join volunteer causes (Royal Bank). It is a great CSR initiative related to the Torch Relay and it makes me wonder whether similar actions (either involving a healthy life-style promotion or something else) were done at previous Games editions and Torch Relays. 

Dr Timothy Armstrong, from the Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion of the World Health Organization (WHO) follows. He’s speaking about physical activity for health – current trends among youth. According to data from WHO an alarming percent of youth do not engage in sporting activities. Therefore, non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes are more prone to happen in lack of physical activities. According to him, Europe is leading the charts with an amazing percentage of NCDs but even Africa, and especially the urban African areas, are deeply affected. Furthermore, he says that by 2015, not very far from today, it is estimated that 65% of the world population will be obese.

He continues with a 6 steps NCD action plan, objective 3 being for example to introduce transport policies that promote active and safe methods of travelling to and from schools and workplaces such as walking or cycling. Bogota has done something in that direction, mainly with tourists in mind, but it had a positive impact on the whole city. This reminds me of another project I heard of at a conference earlier this year, a social network for people looking for a jogging/trekking/cycling partner. Alastair Thin has more details on the project. 

Two more presentations to go. Now Jean-Edouard Baker, President of the Haiti Olympic Committee, speaks about “Sport is the school for life” programme. Presentation is in French. A short movie about the programme is shown. There are 6 sports used in the programme: football, volleyball, judo, taekwondo, tennis and athletics that are backed up in schools by sessions on topics such as sexual education and environmental protection. The programme wants to reach youth both on a qualitative and quantitative level. Mr Baker considers that the programme was successful and that it touched not only the children but also their parents leading to changes in life-style. I do not find the programme idea new but who says that we need something new every time? 

Finally, the last presentation of the day is given by Prof. Margaret Talbot, President of the International Council on Sport Sciences and Physical Education. She speaks about “Changing gender norms and stereotypes through sport: successes and challenges”.  She started with definitions for sex, gender and stereotype, the latter she says, giving an non-scientific explanation, are closely related to myths and help redefine myths rather than challenging them. I disagree with her stereotype=myth definition but I come from a communication background. 

Her example of gender stereotypes and sexualization in governance of sport show two beach, female and male, vollyeball players. Her argument is that the sports uniform enforces a sexist stereotype. She continues to talk about anomalies, a nuisance as she says, for both the rules and fairness in competition. She reminds the audience that much of the rules are based on normalization. She continues with an example from the synchronized swimming in Germany where a boy joined such team. Pre-puberty gender differences she says are far less obvious and that choices are affected by gender as much as by sex. 

Her message is powerful. She argues that we’ve done a lot of entitlement up to today but too little about empowerment. She’s suggesting that stating the obvious, that using the values and resources out there, are the best way to start even when it comes to women promotion in sports and the decrease of stereotyping through sport. 

Q&A 

Prof. Talbot suggests women think about physical activity while men think about sport. It isn’t clear from her answer whether, in reality, women and men define differently the same activities they undertake. 

This concludes the day. I’ll be back tomorrow with other updates from the morning sessions.

IOCFSPD – Session 3 -keynote address and presentations

Lamine Diack, President of the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) shared his personal experience with sport in his keynote address. 

General Lassana Palenfo, IOC Member, Member of the IOC International Relations Commission, gives the first presentation, worried that the minutes he has are not enough for a large topic like the one he wants to approach: The Olympic Movement driving the social and development agenda. He is saying that the IOC is becoming more powerful in promoting their triad of sport, peace and development and is congratulating the IOC for its successes such as those in Darfur. Unfortunately, he doesn’t elaborate so it’s difficult to know which are the successes he’s making reference to. The Olympic Movement is a social force that should and is focusing on the future not the past.

His definition of sport and role in Africa in particular very touching and idealistic. Sport intervenes in sectors such as tourism too so its power should not be neglected. It also intervenes in the process of democratisation. However sport is not a panacea but can have a lot of positive effects. Sport can unite people divided my politics and bring together groups marginalized due to disease, lack of resouces. Sport builds bridges and relationships. It can also reduce the negative effects of poverty. Sport has a catalyzing role. Sports activities also help the economy  - money coming from factories producing sports equipment. The international community should therefore contribute to the development of sport for all these reasons and the political leaders should actively endorse such activities and so should governments. 

Jerome Champagne, Director of FIFA, speaks about the contribution of football to grass-roots development starting by arguing that grass-roots is not only local and that, furthermore, it can have many facets. He continues by saying that there are two different levels of development: of football and through football that can affect the individual, local communities and nations. At the individual level the development is done through education while at the community level investments into the football infrastructure, systems is needed and FIFA, as he says, does just that. Finally, the national level when developed properly has a huge impact at a local/community level. 

He mentions the first time ever award of the FIFA World Cup organization to an African country. He says is all in spirit of fair-play and equal chances, and is in line with FIFAs development actions. He also mentions some of the partnerships FIFA has that he stresses make FIFA actions “child labour” proof. Football for World and StreetFootball, two FIFA initiatives supported and organized by local people. Mr Champagne reminds listeners that FIFA agreed,in accordance to UN regulation, to donate every year 0.7% of its profits to CSR causes. There is some movement in the room, calling the percentage very small, and comparing it to the percentage of tax that an individual has to pay towards the state where they reside. 

A sport that doesn’t protect and promote peace, he says, has no value nor impact on development. 

Now about the African Union Perspective from Dr Johan Strijdom from the Department of Social Affairs of the African Union Commission. His presentation in a nutshell: the AUC is strongly committed to the Olympic values. 

Brend Espeland, Acting Chief of the Australian Sports Commission, closed the session 3 presentations with “The Oceania Experience – a Holistic Approach”. An interesting point – prioritizing relationships mentioning that it is not important just to have the relationships (with other groups, organism, people) but using them at the right time. He also says that in sports promotion people should start building on what works based on what exists. It’s a sensible point that emphasizes the need of using the resources given and communicating with local groups and communities using their culture as common ground rather than pushing something that is new and might be rejected by them. The idea is that in this way regional sport could, in time, be integrated in mainstream activities. 

The common element of all presentations today seems to be the agreement of all speakers that sport (and mainly organized sport) has plenty of positive effects. What few are saying (it was mentioned just once) is related to the negative effects of sport when used to push violence and emphasize rivalries as well as the ways to prevent that from happening.