Pass it on!

“No challenge is too big”. This could be the Peace Through Sport Camp’s motto. Neither the red dust of Wadi Rum’s desert nor the long working group sessions at the Youth Hostel in Amman discouraged the participants. How could they? The majority of them arrived in Jordan after leaving behind --for just 10 days-- their shattered countries.

For this first pilot Camp, which is part of a worldwide peace initiative promoted by Prince Feisal al-Hussein, the organization selected 70 participants (including 25 women), between 18 and 61 years old, from different backgrounds (athletes, sports managers, aid workers, teachers, trainers…), different religions (Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists) and different conflicts (Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Sudan).

The aim of the programme is simple: to bring together leaders of youth from divided communities around the world; to train and equip them with the know-how and tool to use sport to unite children from all sides of their divides. According to the organisers “Peace Through Sport has no answers to all major issues, but it can help to combat any divide, even if it’s violent or less tangible”.

Ahila, UNDP coordinator in Sri Lanka, believes in a cross community approach, where sport is used “to lower tensions and relieve stress”. Her project intends to target 1.000 schools in three years. She organizes friendly matches with mixed teams between children from the worst conflict areas affected by war and tsunami.

In Afghanistan, Maihan, an active basketball player, member of the Afghan Women Network and the Youth Parliament, wants to convince the ministries of Education, Youth and Sports to invest in peace-building activities at girls’ schools.

In conflict, especially if you are talented, the temptation to migrate is always strong. The Camp seems to have helped some participants to make up their mind. Abeer hesitated about staying in Palestine. She just came back from the United States, where she finished her studies, when she was offered a short time cooperation job. The last day of the Camp se decided to launch her own project. The same hesitation invaded Mace, the youngest participant, a tennis player from Baghdad who works for the local NGO Al-Amal (Hope) and applied for a scholarship in business management in France. Because of security (athletes and sports leaders have been the target of kidnappings and killings) she has not been able to enter a tennis court for a year, but she believes that values of sport, if well taught in schools, can help to improve the situation.

Abdallah lives in the border city of Nabatiyeh in South Lebanon, a few miles from Palestine. He just finished to rebuild his house, destroyed during the Israeli bombings last year. Volunteer at UNDP’s local branch, he dreams of opening his own football academy. Peace Through Sport will endorse him. Leaving Nabatiyeh is out of mind: “We have to build on the younger generations, the same way we are rebuilding our houses on the place we have been living for ages. Some of my neighbours have seen their homes reduced to ashes four times”.

“Peace making and peace building is different”, says Paul, who defines himself as an “athlete and peace builder”. “When war comes to an end, the challenge becomes normalization of life. Sport is a tool, not competitive, not violent, to sustain peace”. Paul has plans to organize basketball, tennis, table tennis, volleyball and handball schools in the southern region of Bor.

Jordan participated in the Camp with a delegation of eight peacekeepers that, after completing their training, will in turn train thousands of soldiers going on missions to Eritrea, Ivory Coast and Haiti in the next months. Colonel Iyad, a mechanical engineer who has been deployed in UN peacekeeping operations in Vukovar (Croatia) in 1996 and Mazar el-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan, will promote a specific training on peace through sport in the Armed Forces Academy.

The baton is changing hands. Pass it on!