Rights Through Sport - Mapping “Sport For Development And Peace”

Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) refers to the use of sport, physical activity, and play to attain specific development, and peace objectives. It is a high-profile endeavour, involving multiple stakeholder groups adopting different approaches and operating at different levels in terms of their policies, funding, and operations.

Rights Through Sport: Mapping “Sport for Development and Peace” provides an overview of the actors involved in SDP and outlines how their work incorporates human rights principles.

Well-crafted SDP programmes currently develop methodologies that look at the overall impact of programmes on the well-being of the communities where they operate. A smaller number of SDP programmes explicitly look at human rights outcomes, or claim to embody a right-based approach. However, there is very limited recognition of the programmes’ own human rights responsibilities or implementation of human rights due diligence as outlined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

The report includes a series of recommendations for SDP actors to harness the power of sport for good, to maximise its positive effects and to minimise the negative.

This centres around undertaking human rights due diligence throughout the lifecycle of SDP programmes. Doing so can demonstrate how a rights-based approach to SDP can support positive outcomes aligned with the UN Global Goals on Sustainable Development and foster closer links between those involved in the SDP agenda and actors working to promote the connections between sport and human rights.