Sport can play a vital role in encouraging development, UN adviser says

Sport can help nations achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), drawing young people away from risky behaviour into activities that teach skills and values essential to life, a senior United Nations envoy for sports said today.

Adolf Ogi, the Secretary-General's Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace, told a seminar in Helsinki, Finland, that sport can bring benefits both to individuals, who can enjoy participating in healthier activities, and to wider communities as it can often build better relations.

The cricket series last year between Pakistan and India helped improve relations between the neighbours, Mr. Ogi said, adding that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) works with the non-governmental organization (NGO) Right to Play to bring sports to refugee camps around the world.

Mr. Ogi also recently visited Brazil and Colombia to see first-hand several programmes that try to attract young people off the streets and into sports.

"Sport, thanks to its global cost-cutting capacities in human development, can add tremendous positive value to international development work," he said.

The MDGs are a set of eight, time-based targets – including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger and the achievement of universal primary education – that world leaders agreed to at a UN summit in 2000.

Today's Helsinki seminar was organized as part of the International Year of Sport and Physical Education.