Commonwealth Sports Development Conference

I extend my sincere thanks for this invitation to join you all today at the second Commonwealth Sports Development Conference. We meet in Glasgow, the ‘Friendly City’, that last November won the honour of hosting the ‘Friendly Games’ - the Commonwealth Games - in 2014.

I am honoured and delighted to be here – and relieved that no one has yet seen fit to welcome me with what I understand is called a Glasgow kiss…. Your warmth and hospitality are second to none – and, in tandem with your vision, your infrastructure and your organisational capacity, it is no surprise that your bid to host the Games was seen as so convincing. Many congratulations on your great achievement, and I look forward to walking with you on the way towards 2014. But first, of course, I shall be walking with my very own city of New Delhi, on the way to 2010. I am in touch with the Indian Minister of Sports Minister and sensing what the Commonwealth sees time and again with its Ministerial Meetings, its biennial Heads of Government Meetings, and more: that – for all the stress of the preparation – things fall into place in time.

Like most of you here, I am the first to confess that I celebrate sport for sport’s sake. A lot of people can reasonably claim to be avid sports fans …. and excuse any out-of-shapeness simply by saying that their hobby impels them to spend so much time watching it on TV…. I, too, love sport, and always find myself smiling at the one piece of advice which can reasonably be given to just about all sports-people, to ‘bend at the knees’. I have a special passion for cricket and athletics, both of which I attempted to pursue. I was glad of the adage that what truly matters is the spirit in which you play the game, and not whether you win or lose. This was my saving grace! Like so many people, I turn as readily to the back of the newspaper as to the front, particularly if I want to see the best of human nature and achievement.

But we are here today to celebrate sport and its greater ends – far, far beyond the stadia, the television cameras, the trophies. We are celebrating sport and its ability to develop individuals, groups of individuals, even entire communities…. We are celebrating sport as a means to health, and to wholeness.

Let us reflect just for a minute on why the Commonwealth Games are known as the Friendly Games. Play word association with the word ‘Commonwealth’, and most people will say ‘Commonwealth Games’. But the Commonwealth, of course, predates the Commonwealth Games, and there wouldn’t be a Commonwealth Games without a Commonwealth. Very simply, we are friends, and have a sense of belonging together. Across 53 countries on 5 continents – spanning a third of the world’s population, a quarter of its countries and a fifth of its trade – countries rich and poor, large and small, island and land-locked, and people of every colour and faith – we are bound by language, traditions and institutions, and we stand for values, and putting those values into practice. We believe in freedom; in democracy and development; in supporting the poorer, the weaker, and the smaller among us. We are joined together as partners and as equals. The Games only express this bond.

That is the context in which we meet today, as we ask ourselves where sits sport within this grander Commonwealth equation. Sport is now irreversibly part of that equation – our task is to make it yet more so.

When our Commonwealth leaders met in Valletta at the end of 2005, we 53 countries formally endorsed the power of sport. I quote: ‘Heads of Government underlined the important role of sport as an effective instrument for community and youth development in terms of building character, discipline, tolerance and friendship, promoting fair and open sporting competition, protecting the integrity of young athletes, and in creating broader opportunities for socio-economic development in the Commonwealth.’ A bit of a mouthful – but that ‘Paragraph 88’ of the Malta communiqué is our chapter and verse, our mandate, and our rallying cry.

We have gone further, and put it into practice. With invaluable financial help from the Government of Australia and technical help from UK Sport, our Commonwealth sports advisers – first Martin Niblett, and now Nick Pink – have sprung from the blocks.

First, we now have a formal community of Sports Ministers, who have met three times now in the margins of both Commonwealth and Olympic Games. They last met in Melbourne in 2006; they next meet in Beijing this August. The Commonwealth is often at its best when it works informally but at the highest levels – sharing ideas and best ways of doing things.

Second, we have established the Commonwealth Advisory Board on Sport - or CABOS – represented here today, and so ably led by Sue Campbell. Two years ago, CABOS assembled a superb body of evidence in the form of case studies from five continents, on the best ways that sport can transform societies. It is now producing a follow-up volume further animating that theme, which will be ready by August, when CABOS will play a key role at the Beijing meeting.

Third, we have run individual sports projects, from the technical to what you might call the social. At the technical end, we have funded experts to work in four of the Regional Anti-Doping Offices worldwide which have been set up by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Part of their work is about dope-testing itself; while part of it is about launching education programmes to underline the fact that doping, or any other form of cheating in sport, is completely unacceptable. From the technical to the grass roots, where sports are an important element in the Commonwealth youth rehabilitation centre in Gulu, Northern Uganda – a centre we have set up to bring young people out of the trauma of conflict and into the mainstream of everyday life.

The fourth, I hope, is still to come, and is triggered by three Commonwealth ministerial meetings. When Heads of Government made a renewed political commitment to our young people in Uganda last November, they pledged more money to support one of our oldest and most effective activities, the Commonwealth Youth Programme. Then, when our Youth Ministers met in Colombo 6 weeks ago, they re-affirmed the close links between sport and youth, and the role of sport in youth development. Finally, when our Sports Ministers meet in Beijing in two months time, they will reciprocate in kind. The upshot, I hope, will be that the Commonwealth Youth Programme is better funded, and that sport becomes an established part of it. The potential to integrate elements of sport into our Commonwealth programmes – particularly those in health and in education – is enormous. So please watch this space.

What exactly do we mean by Sport for Development?

While Kofi Annan was still Secretary General, the UN formed an international working group on Sport for Development and Peace. The group is set to launch a comprehensive report on the eve of this year’s Olympic Games. It will include contributions from over 50 countries, including many Commonwealth ones, showing how Governments have enthusiastically embraced sport as a means of developing their people, and – in my mind, most importantly – their young people. The key recommendation of this report will be to encourage governments to integrate sport into their national Poverty Reduction Strategic Plans, or PRSPs.

So it is a political process, in the most liberal sense, whereby we can use the power of sport as a medium for enhancing young people’s skills and life chances. That is why I am here today. I would just like, briefly, to pick out four aspects of Sport for Development.

First, sport is a subject like any in the classroom – it does teach learning, and it certainly raises self-esteem and self-confidence. That’s why in South Africa, for instance, the School Sport Mass Participation programme is putting in trained specialists into communities across the country. There are quantifiable successes to report, in behaviour, attendance and – hear this – better academic results.

Second, sport is good for girls and young women, as well as boys and young men. Many of you will know that - in swathes of the developing world - fewer girls than boys are enrolled in school, and - for the girls that are in school - fewer complete their education than do the boys. The good news is that sport can help to redress this imbalance. In Kenya, for instance, the Mathare Youth Sports Association ‘Letting Girls Play’ project gives girls the chance to develop through sport. I have a particular concern in the area of the girl-child, as the key to social enlightenment.

Third, sport is for all. It includes those who might otherwise be excluded. Most obviously, sport is a visible way of showing the extraordinary things that people with disabilities can do. Here, we salute the work of the International Paralympic Committee. Meanwhile in a place like Mauritius, I read of the ‘Dreams and Teams’ programme, training young leaders to work with disabled youngsters, through sport, and mainstream education, and society in general. There are others who are excluded, too, and for whom sport can give a sense of meaning, discipline and worth – I think especially of offenders here.

Fourth, and perhaps most obviously, sport is a means to develop a healthy life. Nowadays, the role of sport in promoting the healthy life is seen especially in the way it has raised awareness around HIV and AIDS. In Zambia, for instance, Edusport’s GoSisters programme uses sport and physical activity to encourage girls to stay in school or return to education, thereby improving their chances of gaining paid employment and stops them from straying into the sex trade. Girls learn about HIV and AIDs and become respected community role models, even International Ambassadors.

So Sport is for Development. And our highest development goals, as you know, are the Millennium Development Goals, the indicators of human dignity to which 192 countries committed themselves in the year 2000. For all the massive progress in meeting those Goals, not least in India and China, they are a long way from being realised. But they are a universal framework and challenge for all. And sport, too, has its role to play in how we meet them.

Ladies and gentlemen, again I thank you for inviting me to be with you today, and I wish you a very successful conference. Let us continue to work together to understand and harness the power of sport to changes lives for the better. This ties in with the theme of political, economic and social transformation which was adopted at the last Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala.

So whether it’s back-street football, or alley-cricket bowling with a tennis ball and batting with a chair-leg, or whether it’s the stuff of stadia and worldwide headlines, sport is far more than just the all-purpose ‘bending of the knees’. Nelson Mandela should know: both he and Francois Pienaar lifted the Rugby World Cup in 1995 for a new South Africa – and with it, they lifted their hopes for a just, fee, equal society. It was Mandela himself who once said: “Sport has the power to unite people in a way that little else can. It can create hope where once there was only despair. It breaks down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all kinds of discrimination. Sport speaks to people in a language they can understand.”

ENDS