Tuesday, January 19th- Day 12

My final week at the UN started off with an address by Ban Ki-moon. He spoke at the international launch of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, authored by UNESCO. The focus of this report is to reach the marginalized youth population who do not have access to education. Achieving universal primary education is the second MDG, and as described by this morning’s panel, the most important. Since the turn of the millennium progress towards this goal is noticeable, but simply not enough. In 1999, 105 million children did not have access to any level of education. Ten years later the number is reduced to 72 million, and if trends continue in the next five years it will be reduced another 16 million, falling 52 million children short of the 2015 goal.

The secretary general has stated that based on the current progress, achieving this goal will be difficult, but not impossible. According to Mr. Ban there are two key areas that must be addressed. The first is organizational donors meeting their international commitments, and the second is providing for the socially marginalized children of the world. Sport and leisure are important puzzle pieces in the efforts to get the progress towards this goal back on track. (Would I be mentioning this report is they weren’t?)

First, is the 1Goal Campaign. The 1Goal Campaign is coordinated by Global Campaign for Education and FIFA, as they attempt to leverage the popularity of the FIFA World Cup to generate awareness, and financial donors, this summer. The campaign asks donors to sign their name for those cannot, and why not use the biggest sporting event of year as a platform? In the months preceding the cup 1Goal will use the popularity of its Goodwill Ambassadors to continually advocate for this cause.

The second way that sport and leisure helps marginalized children is through grass roots programs. I have already mentioned the correlation on this blog and UNESCO has detailed evidence in publications such as the 2003 report: Sport for Development and Peace, but sport and leisure are crucial in the reduction of social marginalization. Sport breaks down the barriers created by religion, gender, caste systems, etc. In 1978, UNESCO released a publication entitled The International Charter of Physical Education and Sport. Article 2 of this charter defined the role that physical education has in the creation of “will-power and self-discipline of every human being as a fully integrated member of society.”

As on cue, upon leaving the launch I heard the voices of protestors from outside the United Nations. Hundreds of Christian Copts had gathered across the street from the UN to call for a respond to the continued attacks on Egyptian Coptics and the Egyptian government’s mild response. In Egypt, this religious sect accounts for only one eighth of the population and is heavily discriminated against. Education rates in Egypt are among the highest in Africa; however in 2001 it was revealed that the textbooks that teach Egyptian children negatively portray Coptic Christians, further marginalizing this population.

Despite the small numbers of this religious following, it was nearly impossible not to see the impact they had today. This is really the key to reaching out to marginalized children; finding a common denominator they will unify all. (Cough, cough, sport and leisure, cough, cough.)
I watched the protestors from inside the secretariat building with one of the UN translators. The translator, Yannika, and I struck up a conversation about the likely struggle of Christian Coptics in Egypt, neither of us were aware of their plight beforehand so we could only speculate. However, Yannika told me her story of how growing up in the Bahamas she dreamed of working for the United Nations. She talked about how important it was for her to stay focused on education, and even mentioned to me that she is getting ready to pursue her Ph.D. It made me wonder how many of those 72 million children living without education in less developed nations have the potential to work in the UN, if only they had the access to education.

Something else that I wanted to research today was the relationship between the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and leisure. To this point I have not been able to find a connection between sport and leisure and part of the first MDG: eradicating hunger.

In March of 2009, the FAO hosted “Football Against Hunger Weekend” over 200 European Football Clubs participated, with the funds raised going directly to fight world hunger. The FAO has now partnered UEFA and CAF to host events like this in the future. The following quote is from the Director-General of FAO Jacques Diouf after signing a cooperation agreement with CAF.

“FAO has always set great store by the power of sport in general, and professional football in particular, as a tool for peace and development and a means to mobilise political will and resources in the fight against global hunger.”

Ok, so sport can raise awareness for hunger, but that’s about it. I mean you can’t physically feed people through a leisure activity right?

Wrong.

Whether or not you may consider it a sport, recreational fishing is without a doubt a leisure activity. The FAO conducted a study in 1990s entitled Utilization of Small Water Bodies, Botswana. The study explored the growth of fishing as a source of both leisure and hunger prevention in the landlocked African country. When this study was conducted fishing was relatively unheard of in Botswana. Half the population in the studied areas lists the unavailability of fish for sale as a reason why they do not eat fish. The second most common reason was that households do not know how to fish and/or do not have time to learn.

The report explains that the communities could benefit by charging reasonable leisure fishing permits (and the funds could be used towards education), which would also maintain the population of fish. In addition, the households would have a sustainable source of food. Considering 80% of the fish consumed among study participants was tinned, this softens their reliance on world trade.

As cliché as it is, the saying, “teach a man to fish he’ll eat for a day, teach a man how to fish he’ll eat for a lifetime”, comes to mind here.