Sport Diplomacy and Sport for Development SfD: A Discourse of Challenges and Opportunity

🌈 Abstract

The article aims to illustrate the intersection of Sport Diplomacy and Sport for Development approaches, exploring the potential contribution of sport diplomacy to practitioners and policymakers in the sport landscape, including those addressing Sport for Development (SfD).

📄 Section Summary

The Intersection of Sport Diplomacy and Sport for Development

• The article explores the relationship between sport diplomacy and sport for development, recognizing the potential for sport diplomacy to provide skills and tools for practitioners and policymakers to critically reflect on their practices and operate more effectively in the diplomatic realm.
• Sport diplomacy provides navigation skills to enhance practitioners' and policymakers' abilities to connect with and learn from different parts of the sport landscape, and offers reflection at the strategic level.
• The practice of sport diplomacy aggregates different stakeholders, agencies, and actors with non-aligned goals into contextually defined and aligned purposes, recognizing simultaneous relationships across several realms and providing a tool for previously unrealized discourse across a network of networks.
• The article's analysis demonstrates the coexistence of complementary and conflictual interests and practices within both sport diplomacy and sport for development, presenting both challenges and opportunities for future alignments and complementary practices.

The Role of the United Nations and the Sustainable Development Goals

• The article addresses the practice of sport diplomacy within the framework provided by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), blending conceptual thinking on sport diplomacy with its application in the context of the SDGs.
• The Kazan Action Plan, the output of UNESCO's 6th International Conference of Ministers Responsible for Sport and Physical Education, is described as a distillation of sports diplomacy, representing the coming together of the sporting and diplomatic realms with implications for SfD.
• The article explores the synergies and disjunctures between sport for development, sport diplomacy, and the SDGs, focusing not only on the content of the SDGs but also on the diplomatic practice they reflect and contribute to, and the trajectory towards delivery by 2030.

The Foundations of Global Diplomacy

• The article briefly considers the basic tenets of global diplomacy to demonstrate that the practice of diplomacy is "at play" in the realms of sport for development and sport diplomacy.
• Global diplomacy is presented as a more fundamental and inclusive perspective on diplomatic practice, acknowledging its political context, broader range of activities, and the involvement of various actors beyond the nation-state.
• The article highlights the key characteristics of global diplomacy: communication, representation, and negotiation, and how these intersect to form the practice of diplomacy.

💡 Key Insights

• The article explores the potential for sport diplomacy to provide skills and tools for practitioners and policymakers in the sport landscape, including those addressing Sport for Development (SfD).
• Sport diplomacy is presented as a means to aggregate different stakeholders, agencies, and actors with non-aligned goals into contextually defined and aligned purposes, recognizing simultaneous relationships across several realms.
• The article blends conceptual thinking on sport diplomacy with its application in the context of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), exploring the synergies and disjunctures between sport for development, sport diplomacy, and the SDGs.
• The article adopts a global diplomacy approach, which acknowledges the broader range of diplomatic activities and the involvement of various actors beyond the nation-state.