Sport for development and peace: the idea explained
What sport for development and peace means, how the UN took it up in 2001, why 6 April is its international day, and how football projects use it.
“Sport for development and peace” is the name for a simple idea that became a whole field: sport, deliberately organised, can help achieve goals that have nothing to do with winning. Health, education, gender equality, reconciliation after conflict. Football is the sport most often used, and the streetfootballworld festival 06 was one of its best-known showcases.
The idea in one paragraph
Sport for development and peace (often shortened to SDP) does not mean that sport is good for people in some general way. It means using sport as a tool inside a programme with a specific aim. A football league that gives points for neighbourhood clean-ups, like the Mathare Youth Sports Association, or a coaching session that ends in a conversation about HIV, like Grassroot Soccer, are typical examples. The match is the reason people come; the programme around it is the point.
The United Nations takes it up
In 2001, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan created the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP). Its mandate was to coordinate the UN’s work on sport in a systematic way, as a means of contributing to development and peace.
The office was led by a Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace:
| Period | Special Adviser |
|---|---|
| 2001–2007 | Adolf Ogi, former President of the Swiss Confederation |
| From March 2008 | Wilfried Lemke, from Bremen, Germany, appointed by Ban Ki-moon |
UNOSDP was based at the UN Office in Geneva, with a liaison office in New York. The UN announced its closure on 4 May 2017.
6 April: the international day
On 23 August 2013, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 67/296, proclaiming 6 April the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. The date commemorates the opening of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. The International Olympic Committee has supported the day since 6 April 2014.
The resolution invites governments, the UN system, sports organisations, NGOs, the private sector and others to observe the day and raise awareness of what sport can do for social change.
How football fits in
Football dominates the field for practical reasons: it is cheap, needs little space and is understood almost everywhere. Some of the largest SDP initiatives are football-based:
- Football for Hope, created by FIFA and streetfootballworld in 2005, explicitly aimed to help achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals through football, and built community centres across Africa.
- Common Goal, launched in 2017, raises money for football charities through a 1% salary pledge.
- The streetfootballworld festival 06 brought 22 social projects to Berlin during the 2006 World Cup. Germany’s Foreign Office said the projects aimed to give young people “a social perspective in their home country” and that the tournament should set “a clear sign against violence, xenophobia and racism”.
The hard questions
The field has to answer difficult questions. Does sport cause the change, or do programmes simply attract young people who were already motivated? Are results measured, or assumed? Organisations such as Grassroot Soccer have commissioned university studies; many smaller projects cannot afford to. The closure of the UN office in 2017 also showed that institutional support can be fragile.
FAQ
What does “sport for development and peace” mean?
Using sport deliberately, within programmes, to reach social goals such as health, education, inclusion and peace-building.
When is the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace?
Every year on 6 April, as proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2013.
Does the UN still have an office for sport?
The UN Office on Sport for Development and Peace, created in 2001, was closed in 2017.
Conclusion
Sport for development and peace gave a name and an institutional framework to work that projects like MYSA had been doing since the 1980s. Explore the organisations behind it in our football for development section.