In Oceania, building a network with a shared commitment to equal, safe and inclusive sport
To ensure safety in Olympic sport takes many actors, from the sports movement and from wider society.
A pivotal SafeSport workshop in Oceania marked an inflection point – a shared commitment to, first, the promotion of equity, next, inclusion in and through sport, and then, critically, ending violence against girls and women.
How to do these things? One, raise awareness. As Liz Dawson, President of the New Zealand NOC, would say later in an interview, “Equality is just getting the same stuff. Equity is levelling the playing field.” Two, train people of good faith and good will.
The Oceania Sport, Equality and Inclusive Communities Impact Network is the umbrella name for a collection of organisations: ONOC, through its Equity Commission; UN Women; the Australian Government’s sport for development programme “Team Up,” and the IOC, in particular through Olympic Solidarity and Olympism365.
Olympism365 is the IOC’s strategy to strengthen the role of sport as an important enabler for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in line with Recommendation 10 of Olympic Agenda 2020+5.
Across such a wide region, a fundamental: collaborating on pilot projects to try to build a network with a shared commitment to equal, safe and inclusive sport. Thus, in simple terms: for the Impact Network, safeguarding is a key priority – with an eye towards now and, already, the Olympic Summer Games Brisbane 2032.
As Delphine Sergumaga, the UN Women Fiji multi-country office representative, said at the workshop, which ran for three days in Nadi (Fiji) in October 2023, according to an ONOC news release, “The Pacific has some of the highest rates of violence against women and girls,” Papua New Guinea often ranked as likely the worst place in the world for violence against women, “and UN Women … has been collaborating closely with sporting partners … recognising the power that sport has in the region to influence transformational change.”
Sixteen of the 17 NOCs from across the far-flung region took part; since then, all have used lessons learned in local or national workshops ahead of the 2024 Paris Games.
Moreover, for further safeguarding support, up to USD 10,000 is available – from Olympic Solidarity’s Olympic Values Unit – for each of the Pacific Islands NOCs: with this substantial funding designed to kickstart next-step action plans.
In all, the Nadi meeting had 70 participants, from 32 sporting bodies and 13 sports, including rugby, often a social force across the islands of the Pacific. Among them, as a TeamUp report would later note:
Macho Letia, “amplifying impact” through the Nauru Rugby Inclusion Impact programme; Mary Estelle Mahuk, “affectionately known as the ‘Golden Mama Blong Vanuatu’”; and Maria Rarawa, a “driving force” in the Solomon Islands’ Just Play programme. Roshika Deo, GEDSI and safeguarding advisor with TeamUp, helped lead events in Nadi.
“The impact of the network, because of the different partners, has been able to provide not only the governance strengthening, the policy support, but also to have instilled this knowledge in people,” she said, adding, “the motivation, so to speak; the confidence they can do something.
“Whether it’s to train staff, to put in a policy, to put training in the policy, a flow chart – now they know they have these resources, this network.” The IOC in March 2023 announced the creation of a USD 10 million fund per Olympiad for safeguarding.
Dawson, who also serves as a member of the IOC Safeguarding Working Group and as co-chair of the ONOC Equity Commission, said, “It’s all well and good bringing in these concepts and ideas from Europe and the Americas. If they don’t fit the context and aren’t designed for a local and regional basis, you’re almost guaranteed that the success factor is going to be a lot less.”
Evidence of what was always intended to be this full-circle approach: workshops for national federations in Guam, sessions as well in Tuvalu, Federated States of Micronesia and Samoa, delegates from Fiji bound for Paris 2024 educated around the Games.
And at the get-together in Fiji of how it could be a jumpstart, from some of the comments offered at the time:
“This workshop is an eye-opener for me. Coming from the service providers’ aspect, I’ve learnt on the different arms of sports and its governing board ...” As well: “A very necessary and worthwhile initiative.”