By Salma Yusuf
Agrowing number of sports persons and organisations have sought to intervene in conflict zones to encourage reconciliation between estranged communities. The international community unanimously declared the year 2005 as the International Year of Sport and Physical Education, serving as formal recognition of the added value of sport as a peace-building factor. Contemporaneously, in several regions of the world, the fundamental values of sport and play have been acknowledged as important contributors in the building of a stronger civil society where tolerance and lasting relationships are developed.
DIPLOMACY
At a cursory glance, the links between sport and inter-state reconciliation seem abundant. Some pundits credit Ping-Pong Diplomacy with facilitating the subsequent thaw of U.S.-China relations in the 1970s. Others point to Table Tennis Diplomacy and the attempted Olympic Diplomacy as effective differencebridges between the two Koreas in the latter decades of the 20th century. More generally, there has been a widely held sense that sports, as Jeremy Goldberg states in his ground-breaking work titled `Sporting Diplomacy: Boosting the size of the Diplomatic Corps,’ serve as “a `safe’ way to ease a country out of isolation, acting as a first step of engagement.”
This transformation of conflict-laden bonds is not limited to inter-state rivalries. In 2007, the apparent success of the Côte d’Ivoire’s national men’s football team in rallying the country and ending a five-year long civil war between Northern rebels and the government-controlled South was hailed as a testament to the remarkable power of sport in peace-building. Hence, sport appears to possess a quality which promotes not only inter-state reconciliation but also intra-state reconciliation. Judging from both the aforementioned Ivorian example and the images of a celebrating multiethnic Iraq following that country’s victory in the Asian Football Confederation Championship, it would seem that sport has at least a temporary ability to create intrastate linkages between conflicting factions.
National-level sporting events are therefore perceived to offer reconciliatory powers and diplomatic significance by members of society and powerful elites. In both Côte d’Ivoire and Iraq which experienced either “cold” (potential) or “hot” (open and violent) inter-state and intra-state conflicts, there have been concrete examples in which at least a segment of those involved point to sport as a significant factor in obtaining reconciliation. For one reason or another, sport seems to have a unique ability to transcend common social cleavages such as class, nationality, and race and create bonds between sides in conflict.
POLITICSBY OTHERMEANS
Sport for reconciliation projects can be used to promote social inclusion breaking down barriers and creating bridges between opposing groups. Sport can help the process of reconciliation by building confidence and trust among diversity, advancing the national healing process, encouraging resiliency, and restoring a sense of normalcy into the lives of those affected by war.