"What would I have become without high performance sport? What would my life have been like without figure skating? More than twenty years after the end of my international career, I still do not know how to answer these questions. I might have been a professional...
"I discovered football when I was 7 years old. In Bethlehem, in my country Palestine. When I started, girls didn't kick balls. Nobody accepted it. There was nothing for us. No teams, no coaches, no equipment. Nothing. But I insisted. In my world of barbed wire and...
"Sport has changed my life. It has made me. It has brought me so much, including an Olympic medal - bronze - in the kayak single men’s slalom at the 2008 Beijing Games. The first Olympic medal in Togo's history. But sport has also given me experience, a work method...
"I believe in the power of sport. Life has taught me that it can change things and play a crucial part in inclusion and education. I've always thought this. Nowadays, I still have the same belief in the strength and impact of its values. That's why, on a daily basis,...
"Sport has changed my life. It has totally transformed it. Forever. Today I feel very different from my childhood friends, school friends and co-workers. Sport helped me to move away from the norm. It still occupies most of my life. When I look back at my athletic...
"The slogan that the United Nations has chosen for the 2019 edition of the International Day of Peace - 21 September - calls for "Climate action for Peace”. This emphasizes the importance of tackling climate change as a means of protecting and promoting peace in the...
"The date is underscored by a thick line. On Wednesday, 11 December Peace and Sport International Forum 2019 will open in Monaco. It will last for three days. Three days during which speakers and delegates will discuss the role of sport in the peace process....
I will not forget. Never. I will not forget the experience I just had in August with Peace and Sport. On the occasion of the 10th edition of the Friendship Games, organized in Burundi, I went to my home province, in the south of the country. I went to my school in...
I grew up in a large family in New Caledonia. I had 17 brothers and sisters and we were part of the Nang tribe on Lifou Island. So I was educated with traditions, a culture that is different to the metropolis. I started playing sport at an early age; my father was a...
"Sport is changing. It's changing quickly, faster than ever. With the arrival of new technologies, it has never been so global, connected and shared. The last Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 were the most digital in history. Two years later, the PyeongChang...
“There were so many people who were killed and massacred, but still I wish I was dead. I wouldn’t live with this burden.” The words spoken by a victim of the Kosovo war, a woman raped and tortured over and over by soldiers as part of a war strategy to punish and...
"I had never been to a refugee camp before. I had never had the opportunity to see the reality of its inhabitants' everyday lives. Last April, with Peace and Sport, I visited the Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan as part of the "Live Together" program for Syrian...