CCTS
Review 37

‘Tennis for peace’ anyone? Sport and conflict transformation 
by Amdrew Rigby

Sport as a medium for change: the assumptions

A friend of mine in Israel, a liberal peace-nik, laughed when I told her about my interest in exploring the relationship between sport and conflict transformation. Displaying the cynicism of the idealist she snorted that there were even ‘Windsurfers for peace’ in Israel, and that whenever she and her husband wanted to avoid going to a peace rally or event but would rather relax, they would decide to go and play ‘tennis for peace’.
There does seem to have been a growth in the number of initiatives and projects around the world using the medium of sport to promote peace, co-existence, human rights and sustainable development. The kind of thinking informing such projects was articulated by the Norwegian minister for culture in September 2005, ‘We like to see that sport is ... a tool to promote development and peace, in refugee camps, in packed urban slums, or distant villages, sport is a developer of social improvement. A movement for social change. ... We know that participating in sports can build confidence and teach life skills. ... We know that entire communities can benefit from sport initiatives. Sports movements and organisations represent opportunities for empowerment. If managed well, these movements represent a unique arena for participation and expression. And perhaps most importantly, we know that participating in sports can offer happiness and hope, even when nothing else does.’{1}

These assumptions also informed a research project by the Dutch-based funding agency for women, Mama Cash, called ‘She’s into sports’, which reviewed initiatives around the world that use sports to empower women and girls. The research aimed to further their understanding of the ways sports can contribute to securing women’s rights and promoting social change, and was premised on the belief that ‘participating in sports is healthy, fun, and, above all an excellent tool for developing self-confidence, allowing talents to blossom, and encouraging equality between men and women.’{2}

An example of the manner in which sport is used as a medium by which to enhance the capacity of individuals as change agents is the work of the Association of Kigali Women in Sports. This NGO organises football competitions and other sporting events, trains women as coaches and carries out various conscientisation programmes aiming ‘to improve women’s social status through the advancement of sports as an empowerment tool for women’s rights, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health.’{3}

Sport is also seen as a tool for character-building, especially for the disadvantaged and excluded of our societies. Thus in Burundi the Burundian Association for Sport and Culture targets football at orphans and street-kids as a ‘tool to integrate them in the community’,{4} whilst in Atlanta USA there is a ‘Soccer In The Streets’ programme whose mission is ‘To teach less advantaged kids to make positive choices in life so as to better themselves, their families and communities through soccer’.{5}

But sport is presumed to be an effective agent for change not just at the level of individuals, but also one of the best ways to promote co-existence between those that have been divided. One of the best known examples is the Football for Peace programme in Israel, funded by the British government. Its website details the programme’s mission and aims:

Football for Peace (F4P), a sport-based co-existence project for Jewish and Arab children has been running in towns and villages of the Galilee region of Northern Israel since 2001. The work of F4P builds upon the experiences of South Africa and Northern Ireland in that it seeks to make grass-roots interventions into the sport culture of Israel and Palestine while at the same time making a contribution to political debates and policy development around sport in the region. Its aims are fourfold:

1. Provide opportunities for social contact across community boundaries;
2. Promote mutual understanding;
3. Engender in participants a desire for and commitment to peaceful coexistence;
4. Enhance soccer skills and technical knowledge.{6}

A similar philosophy informed those Kenyan athletes who, in January 2008, decided to organise a peace run, ‘to promote peaceful co-existence among different communities in Kenya.’{7} In a similar initiative, World Vision in Kenya has decided to establish sports leagues as part of their long-term plan for peacebuilding and reconciliation. According to their spokesperson, ‘Right now, children are hearing messages of division and conflict, and we fear seeds of discord are being planted. ... These leagues will allow tribes to come together and find common ground by participating in organized sports.’{8}

In at least one case sport has been hailed as having a central role to play in holding a country together. Thus, according to a report in Vanity Fair, the initiative whereby the Ivory Coast national football team played one of its African Cup of Nations qualifying matches on 3rd June 2007 in the northern centre of Bouake achieved ‘what five years of combat and negotiations could not: an apparent end to Ivory Coast’s civil war.’{9} It had been Didier Drogba, one of the best strikers in the world and a charismatic national figure in Cote D’Ivoire, who had made the suggestion that the game against Madagascar should be played in the capital of the rebel north. The players in the national team came from all over Ivory Coast, and it would seem that their cooperative spirit acted as an example to the rest of the country. The ‘Elephants’ won 5-0, and later Drogba confessed, ‘It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It was more than soccer. To see everyone come together like that, only for a game. It shows how soccer can unite people. Sports in general can do this. Maybe only sports.’
In voicing such a view Drogba was echoing the views of another African hero-figure, Nelson Mandela, who said, ‘Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. Sport can awaken hope where there was previously only despair. Sport speaks to people in a language they can understand.’{10}

Sport and conflict transformation: some questions and queries

In the remainder of this short article I want to raise some questions about the assumptions underlying these programmes and initiatives that use sport to promote co-existence, empower individuals, and help potential deviants (particularly the young) become responsible members of their communities.

Sport can help make peace at the macro-level

Maybe in the case of Cote D’Ivoire the national football team does constitute ‘the fragile glue that holds a disparate nation together’.{11} But just as sport can unite, it can also divide, it can rekindle old rivalries, and in extreme cases can be a causal factor leading to the outbreak of bloody conflict. There is historic enmity between such teams as Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic, with each one used as a symbol by competing sectarian tribes within the city and beyond, particularly in Northern Ireland. There was even a ‘football war’ between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969, so-called because the six-day war was preceded by violence at the international match between the two countries,{12} whilst in Mogadishu in July 2006 militia men shut a cinema showing the German-Italy semi-final of the World Cup, provoking protests that led to the killing of two people.{13}

Moreover, sport can be used to bolster oppressive regimes. The Nazis used the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as a means of promoting national socialism. When Brazil won the World Cup in Mexico in 1970 the military regime could bask in the reflected glory, as could the Argentinian junta after the national team won the 1978 World Cup. Dictators over the centuries have used sporting occasions and sports programmes to divert critical attention away from the regime as part of their strategy for holding onto power.

In other words, at the macro-level of national (and international) politics, sport can be a medium for division and oppression just as surely as it can be an emancipatory and unifying force.

Sport can promote co-existence in divided societies

Can sport promote convivial relationships across the lines dividing communities? Can it act as a bridge? It is obvious that the British government believes the answer is ‘yes’ – otherwise why devote so many resources to running football camps for Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Arab kids in northern Israel? Such programmes are based on what can be called the ‘contact hypothesis’, that inter-group contact under certain circumstances and conditions can bring about attitude changes which can result in a reduction of tensions and the promotion of more harmonious relationships between those that have been divided. The assumption is that by such contact stereotypes are broken down and prejudices challenged as members of what we once viewed as anonymous homogenous categories are revealed to be identifiable human beings with their own idiosyncrasies and cross-community commonalities.

There are several problems with this assumption or working hypothesis. First of all I can vouch for the fact that contact can serve to reinforce prejudices and stereotypes rather than erode them. Secondly, there is the presumption that the attitude change achieved during the contact-situation will be generalised towards other members of the ‘out-group’ beyond the actual encounter. But many of us have had experience over the years of groups in Northern Ireland and elsewhere being taken on ‘residential away breaks’ where they mix in safe surroundings with those from across the divide, only for them to return to their own communities and be re-immersed once more in the group prejudices and taken-for-granted images of the ‘other’.

Gordon Allport and others have established that mere ‘contact’ on its own is not enough to change attitudes. For positive change to take place four conditions are necessary.

1. Parties to the contact situation should enjoy equal status both within and outside the encounter.
2. Parties to the contact should have common goals within and outside the encounter.
3. The contact situation should involve and require inter-group cooperation rather than competition.
4. Parties to the contact should have the endorsement and active support of relevant authorities and opinion-leaders within their respective communities.{14}

As I review this set of conditions I am reminded of the analysis offered to me by someone with a long history of organising Israeli-Jewish/Israeli-Arab dialogue groups: ‘The Israeli-Jews participate so that they can sleep at nights, the Palestinians participate so that the Israeli-Jews cannot sleep at nights.’ Certainly in the context of the type of community relations pertaining within Israel the conditions are just not conducive to positive and enduring attitude change on the part of participants in ‘co-existence through sports’ encounters.

One more point before moving on. I would hope and expect that proponents of sports camps and other such initiatives to promote co-existence through attitude change in divided societies would not claim that this is all that is needed in order to heal the fractures. One of the many tools we have acquired from Johan Galtung has been the A-B-C (attitude - behaviour - context) triangle. It reminds us that to focus solely on promoting attitude change without addressing the need for appropriate transformation in the structural/institutional context and associated patterns of behaviour between the conflicting parties is the imbalanced approach of the ‘A-fundamentalist’ who seeks pacification rather than peace.

Sport as a medium for education in civic values & character-building

A number of claims can be made relating to the significance of sport as a tool for the transmission of appropriate life-skills to people, especially young marginalized individuals. Let me just touch on two of them.

i. Sport ‘builds character’ – participants acquire particular attributes such as confidence, capacity for teamwork etc.

Unfortunately, as Andrew Guest has observed, ‘For every sportsperson with high self-esteem, good cooperative skills, and the character of a leader, there is another sportsperson experiencing depression, dealing with accusations of selfishness, and engaging in drug use or cheating as a way of getting ahead.’{15} Just as sport can teach you self-confidence, participants can also learn how to (and expect to) fail. As one of my friends snarled at me as I gloated after our side had beaten his in our weekly flood-lit football game some years ago, ‘Rigby, you are a lousy loser but you are an even worse winner!’ Reminded of this another friend recalled his feelings after I had defeated him in a game of crown green bowls: ‘It wasn’t that you gloated, but that you were smug and condescending and thoroughly nauseating ... I remember it well ... I don’t think I’ve played bowls since.’

ii. Sport provides an alternative ‘outlet’ or distraction from deviant activities.

This is the thesis that sport provides people with positive ways to spend their time which would otherwise be spent in anti-social behaviour. But doesn’t targeting particular types of people (young inner-city dwellers for example) as needful of the distraction of sport reinforce stereotypes of marginalized people as threatening? As Guest observes, ‘When a child ... who already derogatively recognises him or herself as a “ghetto kid”, learns that they need to be distracted so as not to commit crime, the child develops a conception of him or herself as a threat. Development through sport ideas often unintentionally, and unnecessarily reinforce that self-concept.’

Sport and conflict transformation: The challenge

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