Sport can help cure the worlds problems

Sport is one tool to cure evils in the world, and youth is its key ingredient, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Manuel Ramos Horta told the Olympic Congress on Sunday.

"I firmly belive that youth are the personification of the unique impact sport can deliver," said Horta, the president of East Timor who won the Nobel prize in 1996.

Horta said competitive sport has "a tremendous amount of social potential" and is "an effective 'bottom-up' approach to peace and community."

But strong measures are needed to lure youngsters away from video games to the playing fields, because of "the risk that the virtues of sport become a cliche in a world plagued by war, famine, poverty, disease and the nefarious impact of climate change."

Horta said that 17 per cent of the world population are inactive and an additional 41 per cent insufficiently active and that non-communicable deaths were most prominent in low- and middle income countries.

Fighting poverty, ending education budget cuts, making sports mandatory at schools and and ensuring recreational areas in the cities are key elements to counter the trend.

Another is the inauguration of the Youth Olympics in 2010, a key for the future of the Olympic Games as well.

"If we want the Olympic Movement to really live in society it is time to make bolder steps and what better time than now," Horta said.

IOC president Jacques Rogge agreed that "We must definitely become more active."

Horta also revealed how he let himself be elected Olympic Committee president of East Timor in 2000 to make the Sydney Olympics, only to be told politely by the IOC that politics must stay out of sport.

The autonomy of sport was the other key theme at the congress on Sunday, with IOC vice-president Thomas Bach saying that additional steps must be taken to ensure it.

The German Bach said that sports - misused for Olympic boycotts in the past and the target of political interference - "must be politically neutral but can not be apolitical."

While the unique autonomy of sports has been granted by various organizations led by the United Nations, it does not mean isolation.

"In order to achieve our objectives and to disseminate our values, we need partners in politics, business, culture and society," Bach said.

Bach proposed autonomy specialists on all sports organisation levels. But the autonomy must also remain in the member structure of the IOC, where stakeholders like international sports federations want more influence, Bach said.

The three-day congress which runs until Monday brings together all Olympic stakeholders - athletes, coaches, doctors, the IOC, national Olympic Committees, sports federations, the public and the media.

Its proposals require ratification from the IOC executive board or the IOC Session, its general assembly.

by John Bagratuni