Sport for Development and Peace: From Practice to Policy

This 184-page report, published by the Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group (SDP IWG) as part of the International Platform on Sport and Development, explores diverse approaches to sport and development. It explores a cross-section of countries, discussing what is working, the challenges, and how national governments can broaden current dialogues to strengthen and encourage more countries to engage in sports initiatives. The report suggests that sport can be a powerful part of broader national development and peace strategies. To this end, the Secretariat reviewed available English-language policy and programme information and interviewed leading SDP government proponents from 13 developing and developed countries.

Key findings from the report include:

• Positioning sport as a tool for development: To engage governments, sport should not be positioned as an end in itself, but rather as a low-cost, high-impact tool to achieve broader development aims, in particular the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
• Building government support: Government support is contingent on the existence of an SDP focal point within government, policy evidence, strong champions, and effective outreach across governments and to external sport and development partners.
• Civil society engagement: Sport federations and development organisations play an essential role in advocating for and delivering SDP programmes. Governments need to engage these civil society organisations as policy and delivery partners, and challenge them to become more engaged in SDP efforts.
• Strengthening the current evidence base: Efforts must be made to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of programmes to increase the current evidence base, and to enhance international and cross-sectoral coordination at the field and policy levels.
• Sustainability: Donor countries are firmly focused on the need to build local and national capacity and ownership to ensure good-quality, high-impact, sustainable programmes, and to foster greater support among developing countries. These face particular challenges due to competing development priorities and resource constraints that need to be explored more deeply and addressed in the SDP IWG's future work.
• National programming: There is strong momentum among developing countries in favour of SDP. A number of countries have national policies already in place or underway, and there are several examples of successful large-scale programmes.
• Regional outreach: Developing nations have been among the first to make use of broader regional organisations to raise the issue of SDP and to invite their peers to consider its potential to contribute to their own national development strategies. This has elicited a strong positive response and promises to be an excellent mechanism for engaging more countries in the ongoing SDP dialogue.
• Engaging multilateral institutions: Government leadership needs to be accompanied by outreach to multilateral institutions not yet involved, to raise their awareness of the value of SDP, and to encourage its integration into their policies and strategies.

The authors conclude that the survey underlying this report shows the enthusiasm of SDP proponents to realise the full potential that sport has to offer and the significant progress that has been achieved in securing national government engagement and support in this process. They assert that, while much work remains to be done, the information, insights, and advice obtained through these findings are invaluable and will be used to inform the work of the SDP IWG as it moves toward the delivery of its final report and policy recommendations (which was slated to occur in Beijing, China, in 2008).