PRESS BRIEFING BY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF UNICEF

PRESS BRIEFING BY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF UNICEF

Sport can serve as a practical tool for achieving United Nations development goals and for promoting peace, Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told correspondents at a Headquarters briefing this afternoon.

Accompanied by Adolf Ogi, Special Adviser of the Secretary General on Sport for Development and Peace, Ms. Bellamy discussed the report of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Sport and Development for Peace, which was submitted to Secretary-General Kofi Annan in April. 

“The report makes a very strong advocacy for the idea that sport is a practical and a cost-effective vehicle to assist the United Nations system in proceeding forward to reach the Millennium Development Goals”, said Ms. Bellamy.  “The message is that we’re shifting the idea of sport, not as a luxury, but as an extraordinary tool that can be used to achieve development and peaceful goals”, she added.

    Ms. Bellamy said the report also urges governments to invest more resources in sports development and to increase their commitment to pursuing the millennium goals through the use of sport, as “a global language that everybody understands”.

She and Mr. Ogi co-chaired the task force representing the 10 United Nations agencies that participated in preparing the report:  International Labour Organization (ILO), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), United Nations Volunteers and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

“This report is about cooperation, teamwork, discipline”, Mr. Ogi said, stressing the critical role of sports in the education of children.  “Through sport you can create a better world”, he added.  The introduction of sports in refugee camps in Uganda had provided children with new hope for the future, he noted.

Ms. Bellamy said UNICEF had recently signed a partnership agreement with the International Volleyball Federation to bring the sport to schools in the West Bank and Gaza.  “Sport has the potential to bridge enormous divides, to help people get reintegrated into their communities and into their society”, she said.

Asked about funding sources for sports development, Ms. Bellamy stressed that the report did not call for United Nations agencies to create new budgets but advocated the use of existing resources to include sports as an additional tool in achieving the millennium goals.

Responding to a question about the extent of United Nations agencies in sports development, she noted that several of them had initiated partnerships and programmes to promote sports in various places.  They included the ILO, which collaborates with the African Football Confederation, UNDP’s campaign Teams to End Poverty, and UNEP’s Play for the Planet campaign, in which the agency works with sports figures to pursue environmental goals.

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