HRH Prince Feisal
Peace Through Sport Speech / IOC Peace and Sport Seminar

Welcome: Tommy Sitole salutation, Mr Chairman, Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends in Peace and Sport.

It is a very special occasion for all of us, that Jordan has been granted the honour to partner with the IOC and host this prestigious Peace and Sport Conference. It is particularly relevant for me and my team at the Jordan Olympic Committee as we recently launched our own initiative, Peace Through Sport, in Amman.

At the end of these few days we will have heard about many schemes that seek to explore the power of sport in bringing harmony to mankind. What is clear is that every idea, every concept and every programme has merit; what is also clear is that no-one has a monopoly in the area of Peace and Sport. For sure, co-ordination, best practice and thought leadership is needed but the very nature of where conflict exists means that centralised control and delivery of Peace and Sport Programmes cannot be easily ensured. But these sorts of initiatives, run by the IOC and United Nations, are a great way of bringing pioneers of peace and sport together to share; to explain; to listen; and to learn.

Throughout history, human-kind has had a tendency to fight amongst itself; and throughout that same history, human-kind has also practiced sport in its purest form. But too often tribal values have won over team values but now there is a growing realisation that sport can really make a difference in our troubled world. It just requires some thought, some patience and people that are inspired and motivated to make a difference.

Peace Through Sport is a programme that we at the Jordan Olympic Committee have developed as a humble but achievable and sustainable contribution towards the establishment of world peace. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Executive Council of the JOC for their support and initial funding of the project. The JOC are true partners in this.

Peace Through Sport has been set up as an organisation to run dedicated peace programmes via sport. In particular, Peace Through Sport will bring together leaders of youth from divided communities around the world and train them in how to use sport to unite children from both sides of their divide.

Specifically, we want to give a ray of hope for young children who are growing up in a climate of fear, repression, bigotry and extremism. We aim to bring children, from all sides of these communities, to come together and play sport. Through mutual participation in sport, and careful guidance from the leaders of youth that we have trained, it is hoped that these children will begin to:

• build dialogue with each other

• understand and respect their differences

• show greater tolerance

• begin to appreciate humankind through sport.

This sounds very worthy - but can sport actually make that happen? Absolutely. Our concept has been carefully researched and tested while working closely with the United Nations and the IOC. We have carefully analysed over 50 peace and sport concepts from all over the world. Every one of them makes a positive difference in the communities where they are based.

We believe that this is the right place, the right time and the right way to make such a contribution to worldwide peace.

This is the right place because Jordan has traditionally been a nation that has sought a path of peace and diplomacy. My father, His Late Majesty, King Hussein, was passionate about seeking peaceful solutions to the region’s greatest conflicts.

On screen you can see a relevant quote from my Father:

My Brother, King Abdullah, has carried on our Father’s work - exemplified by this quote:

And now I am honoured to also carry on our father’s work.
This is the right time because we are experiencing a significant rise in turmoil, division and extremism. Not just here in the Middle East, but throughout the world. This is illustrated by just a few facts of thousands of horror stories we could have chosen that you see up on the screen.

Government-led solutions and diplomacy must remain the route to resolution but there is also a great need to support these top-down initiatives with grass roots actions. Peace Through Sport will be planting seeds of peace throughout the divided world.

And this is the right way, because sport offers something that no politician can ever achieve. Sport is:

• an international language

• universally appealing

• cross culture; cross religion; cross gender

• a means of bridging social and ethnic divides

• both a symbolic and practical unifying force

This has been typified at the highest levels with sport leading some historic diplomatic breakthroughs: Test matches between India and Pakistan after years of isolation; and North and South Korea symbolically marching together at the Opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.


The Peace Through Sport programme itself will comprise the following core elements:
Working with our partners, we will target regions of the world where there is a major divide in the community and which has the potential to escalate into real conflict. We will identify appropriate community leaders who are influential with, and respected by, the youth in that community.

These leaders will be invited to a Peace Through Sport training camp along with 50 – 100 other like-minded leaders from similar situations and environments.

The Peace Through Sport camp will have three main elements to the training:

1. The leaders will be trained how to recruit children from both sides of a divided community and how to organise highly structured but enjoyable sport that deliberately aims to bring diverse children together in a team ethos. This will mean that at least 40% of the Camp training will focus on practical sporting sessions where the leaders will practice by working with children from the region. Leading experts in this field will run this practical training.

2. A further 30% of the Camp training will be theoretical peace education and comprise classroom-based activity. The course content will be designed by proven experts in this area. The objective is to equip the leaders with specialist skills in conflict resolution amongst young people. The course will focus on how to draw on all that is best from sport and use it to promote dialogue and positive engagement.

3. 20% of the course will be spent on training the leaders to be able to go back to their own communities and cascade the programme to like-minded community leaders. In other words we will be training the trainers to train more trainers.

And the remaining 10% of their time will comprise cultural and social programmes for the leaders so that they can view their fellow delegates as friends and a mutual support for life.

We will be running the inaugural Peace Through Sport pilot scheme for ten days starting on October 21st this year at Sport City in Amman. This will be predominantly a regional event and many of your organisations will be invited to nominate delegates.

The Pilot scheme will be structured in the following way. Each morning delegates will receive a seminar on a specified topic. Each afternoon the delegates will be divided into groups and engage in practical activities which connect in part to the morning lecture.

Each evening the organizers, facilitators and delegates will gather after dinner, to reflect on the day's events. There will be a question and answer session. There will be the opportunity to watch a DVD concerning historical and social issues relating to sport.

Delegates who successfully complete the programme, through full attendance and participation in classes, will receive accreditation, validated by me, the JOC and our other partners.

The content development for the Pilot Scheme is still work in progress but the morning seminars may well explore the following areas:

1. History and Purpose of Sport
   This seminar will examine the social history and moral purpose of sport, with reference to peace. We shall consider, for example: ancient sports, including the Olympics, and the 'Olympic Truce'; the global spread of sport; the rise and impact of global sports organizations, such as IOC, FIFA, ICC; the global popularity of sports; sport and community-building; and sport's growing importance to peace and conflict resolution.

2. Sport and Peace: Ethics and Practice
   This seminar will examine the sport-peace relationship with reference to ethics and practice. We shall consider, for example: philosophies of sport, including 'fair play'; sport as a tool for socializing people into positive social behaviour; the role and behaviour of sport coaches; the balance between elite sport and 'sport for all'; sport heroes as role models.

3. Sport, Peace and Conflict
   This lecture will examine the roots of particular conflicts in sport, and how peaceful outcomes may be achieved. We shall consider issues such as: sport and social violence, for example, sport in areas with high crime levels; sport and violent ethnic/national hostilities such as in the former Yugoslavia and in West Africa; sport and internationalism; sport and peace truces, for example during The Olympic Games; sport and social contact such as in The Middle East, North / South Korea, US / China.

4. Sport and Peace: Refugees, Displacement, Re-socialization
   This seminar will examine the particular role of sport in promoting positive social outcomes for displaced and traumatized peoples. We will consider, for example: the general sports work of NGOs among displaced peoples; sports movements in Nigeria among refugees; the Palestinian sports movements in Jordan; the role of sport in re-socializing former war combatants.

5. Sport, Co-existence and Reconciliation
   This seminar will examine the role of sport in promoting peaceful co-existence and forms of reconciliation across 'divided' communities and territories. We consider, for example: sport in the former Yugoslavia, in South Africa, and in Northern Ireland.

6. Sport and Inclusion: Gender
   This seminar will examine the role of women in sport and sport-centred projects. For example: women's rising participation in sport across the world; the different cultural and national views of women in sport; the particular role of women in sport in Eastern societies; the strategies that may be employed to enable women's sporting participation.

7. Sport and Inclusion: the Lifecycle and Disability
   This seminar will examine issues relating to the life-cycle and to disability in relation to sports participation. We will consider, for example: ethical and practical issues regarding the sporting participation of children and older people; and strategies for facilitating the sporting participation of people with disabilities.

8. Sport, Health and Body
   This seminar will examine issues relating to sport and health. We consider, for example: the historical importance of sport in promoting physical and mental well-being; sport as a tool for the prevention of ill-health; and the relationship of diet to sporting performance and health.

All seminars will connect to the sports and practical group work conducted in the afternoon sessions. For example, following lecture i), delegates may gather to discuss practical issues relating to 'fair play' and the nature of sports participation; or, following lecture iii), delegates may be formed into cross-community sports teams to explore how rivalries and divisions may be challenged or broken down.

We will be analysing the outcomes of the Pilot Scheme carefully to ensure that the first full Peace Through Sport Camp in 2008 is relevant and effective.

We are aiming for over 2,000 leaders of youth from divided communities will have been trained by Peace Through Sport in the next three years. In turn, they would have trained a further 6,000 -10,000 other leaders. This should translate to over 150,000 children in divided communities playing sport together and benefiting from their training over the next three years.

But we cannot achieve this alone. So I am delighted to announce that Peace Through Sport enjoys support from the IOC. We also are working closely with the Olympic Council of Asia as well as a host of other organisations.

We are particularly pleased that at Sport Accord in Beijing, we announced that Peace Through Sport agreed to team up with the Charity, Sporting Goods to Go, that will provide sports equipment for our programmes. This also means that our leaders of youth will be sent sporting equipment to use in their local community once they have been through the Peace Through Sport training.

We are also fortunate to have begun to appoint members to our advisory board which will comprise key opinion formers and leaders from the world of sport and peace. I am delighted to say that, to date, our advisory board comprises the following. [Look at screen where all names will be up in alphabetical order].

We have also received enthusiastic backing from international and national athlete stars who will lend their services to promote the programme in their own countries as well as assist in the Peace Through Sport programme, coaching sport to youth from divided communities.

Initial funding for Peace Through Sport has been underwritten by the Jordan Government but we have realistic plans to secure regional and global sponsorship. We are making good progress with two potential global partners. We are also in discussion with the UN and IOC for grants from their relevant schemes.

Ultimately the aim is for Peace Through Sport to develop global thought leadership in this subject area. Therefore we have committed to establish the Peace Through Sport Institute. This will become a centre for academic studies in the area of peace and sport. It will become the centre for training and further developments. It will become a recognised hub for how to use sport as a catalyst for practical peace initiatives.

The Peace Through Sport Institute will be completed within the next three years. The site has been purchased and the architect’s plans already approved. The other week we officially raised the flag at the construction site for the Peace Through Sport Institute.

Furthermore, Peace Through Sport will host a major global conference every two years that will bring together the thought leaders and opinion formers from throughout the world of peace and sport.

Many of our plans depend on positive reaction and participation from National Olympic Committees in this region and other organisations that are invited to put delegates forward. We therefore look forward to working closely with you over the next few months to ensure that the right people in the right areas are put forward to attend the Pilot Scheme.

So dear friends, I have only given you an outline of our ambitious project but I hope that you can now understand why we are all so inspired by this. I hope that you can appreciate why we believe Peace Through Sport can make a small but vital contribution to world peace.


We believe that we will have been successful if we manage to positively change the attitude of just one young person. But I firmly believe that we will do much more than that. And I hope you will be able to come to Jordan in the future and see the progress we have actually made with tens of thousands of young people.

I would now like to end with some of the initial promotional footage that we are planning to use within the sports and business communities to engender interest from potential sponsors and partners seeking bi-lateral relationships. Thank you for your time and support and I look forward to welcoming you to a long and fruitful partnership with Peace Through Sport.

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