Sport Addressing the Crisis in Syria: Our Q&A with Generations for Peace
May 13, 2022
As part of our series highlighting sport for development organizations in our network who are providing vital support, resources and more to those directly affected by humanitarian crises around the world, today read our Q&A with Generations for Peace President, Dr. Mohanned Arabiat about their efforts in Syria.
After 11 years of conflict that has left upwards of 400,000 dead and leveled entire cities and infrastructure systems, more than 12 million people are facing hunger and Syrians are enduring the worst economic crisis since the civil war began. There are 6.9 million Syrian refugees and asylum seekers and more than 6.8 million people internally displaced. 14 million are in need of humanitarian aid with six million of them being children.
In your opinion, what is it about sport that can provide support during humanitarian crises?
Sport is a universal language. It is empowering, motivating and inspirational by nature. It fosters teamwork and blurs interpersonal differences between those playing, who automatically become peers when involved in sport together. It teaches valuable life skills, encourages fitness and good health, time management, respect for rules and each other. The fundamental elements of teamwork and community are what make it such a useful tool in the humanitarian sphere.
Sport For Peace, Generations for Peace's (GFP) flagship peacebuilding tool, was first implemented in 2007 when the organization was established. It uses specifically designed sports-based games and activities that integrate peer-group and peacebuilding education. It promotes a sense of understanding and unity that transcends the divides found in typical day-to-day life in conflict communities.
Sport For Peace has an important role to play in providing safe spaces. It allows social contact between communities in which relationships have been severed by war and other forms of destructive conflict, helping children and youth overcome negative images and stereotypes about those with different abilities, religions and backgrounds, in order to foster acceptance and tolerance.
The platform of sport can help build trust and acceptance, develop respect, ensure inclusion and encourage greater cooperation that tears down barriers between groups.
With millions of Syrians still displaced in the country, what do you see as primary action needed to help the people of Syria?
After over 10 years of conflict, a variety of domestic crises still engulf the people and youth of Syria and burden its citizens. Most of its people’s grievances remain unsolved, and Syrian men and women endure increased pressure in their daily lives. The country's environment is complex and requires an inclusive approach with an emphasis on diversity and interfaith peacebuilding in order to achieve impact.
It was important to us at GFP that our first program in Syria presented an opportunity for the participants to bring together members of diverse groups. The program [Sport for Peace] engages people from multiple regions; some are areas of majority Sunni Arab Muslims, while in contrast, other locations have unique historical ties to the Greek Orthodox Christian community. It also engages communities with varied ethnic identities, like Kurdish and Turkmen identities, particularly from places where the recent conflict and intervention by other local and regional military forces has caused increased tension between Kurdish and Arab residents.
We bring together male and female leaders with different backgrounds and from diverse geographic areas of Syria that are undergoing conflict to participate in intensive leadership and conflict resolution training. This includes progressive inter-faith dialogue sessions and projects that address community inclusion, cooperation and trust across these diverse communities. We believe that these activities will strengthen interfaith relationships and community ties. It is a proactive approach toward rethinking and reworking conflicts from the perspective of peace and cooperation.
In the past, you have supported refugees as part of your Syrian Refugee Response project. Can you tell us more about this project?
Over the last 14 years, GFP has overseen numerous active programs around the world, impacting over 1,417,308 lives. This includes supporting Syrian refugees and host communities as part of the Syrian Refugee Response in neighboring Jordan and Lebanon.
The "Nashatati - My Activities" program is one example. The program began in Jordan in 2017 based on a shared vision between GFP, UNICEF, the Jordanian Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Youth. The goal was to increase the access of vulnerable children (grades 1 to 10) at public schools to sports-based games and art activities designed to foster life skills and development. Through the training, teachers who lead the conflict-transforming activities are also learning the unique dynamics of creating safe spaces that foster social cohesion in communities.
The Nashatati program gradually transitioned from after-school to in-school activities and scaled up. This included 6,931 teachers, training 61 as Master Trainers and focusing on 42 regions across the country. The program engaged more than 150,000 Jordanian and Syrian refugee students each year in 30 hours of high-quality activities. Additionally, it had reduced systemic levels of violence that had previously existed in schools and promoted social cohesion and inclusion of Syrian refugee students and students with disabilities. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the program’s implementation moved online to ensure its sustainability.
We believe that the journey of the program and its successful partnership with the MoE can be a model example for other nations - especially across the MENA Region.
This past January, you announced your first-ever program in Syria in partnership with the Tastakel Women's Organisation. How is this program going and what has been its impact so far?
Tastakel is a group of Syrian women who believe that education, peacebuilding and women's empowerment can put societies on a path to recovery and prosperity. The organization "looks forward to Syria’s transition from dictatorship and tyranny to the values of freedom, justice, rule of law, as well as equality and solidarity."
GFP and Tastakel partnered in January 2022 to implement the IDEAS program, which promotes interfaith dialogue across various Syrian religious and ethnic identities. The training includes law and transitional justice, gender, advocacy, resilience, conflict transformation and peacebuilding.
The pilot program will train 120 individuals, aged 18-45 (60% female, 40% male), working for Syria-focused organizations. With the first cohort finished with 60 participants, Tastakel coordinators remarked that it took several attempts to reconcile the diverse opinions of a number of male and female participants who came from geographical areas under different administrations in Syria. Two months later, the dynamics of the sessions changed and the participants have settled disputes that arose in sessions at the start of the program. Participants from diverse ethnicities are collaborating to work on their project design to pitch to the group next week.
Do you have a message from Generations for Peace that you’d like us to share on your behalf?
At GFP, we firmly believe that sport, arts, dialogue, empowerment and the media are the most effective tools for unifying communities of conflict and creating peace among them. Our programming framework ensures that all our programs have a clear theory of change, a precise focus on a particular dimension of conflict, a specifically-identified target group and carefully-chosen activities with clear indicators to measure their impact. Through these programs, we look forward to continuing to enhance the livelihoods of countless individuals and communities around the world for many years to come.
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