European Olympic Committees (EOC) President Janez Kocijančič today attended a conference called “Sports Diplomacy: Creating Opportunity through Sports” at Dinamo Stadium on the sidelines of the 2nd European Games Minsk 2019.
The event was organised by the Minsk European Games Organising Committee (MEGOC) and Belarusian Institute for Strategic Researches, which provides analytical support for government agencies in the areas of foreign and domestic policy.
The conference explored the opportunities and challenges of hosting major multi-sports events as well as best practices with regard to sports diplomacy. It also highlighted sport’s contribution to tolerance, mutual understanding and peace.
Kocijančič used the opportunity to speak about the power of sport to build bridges between peoples and nations where other avenues fail.
“Sport can resolve many problems that are sometimes too complicated to be resolved by modern states,” he said. “Take the Winter European Youth Olympic Festival in Sarajevo & East Sarajevo this February, for example. They had thousands more people trying to enter the stadium for the Opening Ceremony than could actually fit because the people wanted to tell the leadership and tell the world that they are fed up with animosities and divisions and they would like to live a normal and happy life, a European life.
“In this sense, sport brings to international relations friendship, fair play, solidarity, and mutual understanding.”
The EOC President went on to say that sport provides a “noble” outlet for battle – on the field of play rather than a battlefield.
“Another dimension of sport diplomacy is the opening up of countries,” Kocijančič continued. “You have situations where people think they know everything about a country but when they actually come to the place, they see that the situation is different. Belarus is a typical case, where people know too little about it – how friendly the people are, how open they are, how they would like to be a part of the international community like everybody else.”
The European Games, he stressed, are having a positive effect in opening up Belarus to the rest of Europe and vice versa. “We advance friendship between our countries through sport,” he added.
The conference was moderated by MEGOC Deputy Director Anatol Kotau and featured a panel of distinguished guests, including Belarusian Institute for Strategic Researches Director Oleg Makarov and representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Sports and Tourism, and others.
