The speech by Dalila Sadinlija, UN Office on the Prevention of Genocide, at the panel "Beyond the Game: when sport is righteous", co-organized by UN Office on the Prevention of Genocide and Gariwo Foundation in the framework of GariwoNetwork 2025.
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I have to firstly express my sincere gratitude – on behalf of myself and the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, for the continued cooperation we have with GARIWO. A cooperation which brought us all together here today.
Allow me to also say my sincere thanks here to our wonderful panelists, I cannot wait for you to hear their interventions. Mr. Murangwa, Ms. Soiakri, Ms. Lapichino, Mr. Zoro, Mr. Pastorin – and Mr. Jain whose video we will hear, all have either personally witnessed or actively contributed to the unique role of sports to foster inclusion, to reject discrimination, to inspire change. Their stories are not only worth listening but have to be told.
You might wonder, what is the connection between sports and prevention of atrocity crimes, and what is our particular office doing there? Well, the answer is simple: sport unites us, transcends divisions and is so intimately linked with personal attributions – our personal behaviors as supporters, as viewers, as athletes, as managers, as individuals whose lives touch upon it one way or another. I will tell you a short story.
In October of 2018, a lone shooter walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing 11 people. It was the biggest antisemitic attack in US history, disturbing the calm community. Pittsburgh is known as a sports community, and in that darkest moment, it was the sports community that stepped up to console and to calm: to steer away from hatred and revenge but instead to connect with each other and prevent further bloodshed. This led to what is today called Eradicate Hate Global Summit where the United Nations found a partner to translate this recognition of sports as a tool of prevention into an actionable plan. That Plan is our Game Plan – this plan. You will hear more about it from one of our video panelists: Mr. Rishi Jain, who is spearheading the implementation of this Plan through Liverpool Football Club: a model which we hope would be taken up further.
But it’s not just or only Pittsburgh; as we will hear today, history is full of such examples. GARIWO dedicated the entire exhibit here in Milano, to the Righteous in Sport, exemplary sportsmen and women whose morality went well and beyond sport fields and arenas to step up and do what is right in the wrongest of times. To bring light to the darkness.
And this is what is also at the core of the work of our Office. Our office, the Office on Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect came into being after the darkest of times were witnessed in Rwanda in 1994 and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, my own country, in 1995. It came into being to correct the failings which led to those dark times. Because those dark times do not come out of a sudden. There is a process. There are warning signs. There is a buildup that can be seen and interrupted.
And, that buildup and those warning signs can most easily be witnessed in sports. In the behavior of teammates, in the chants, slogans and behavior of the supporters on the benches. The most visible sign that my birth country, Yugoslavia, will dissolute with violence can be pinpointed to a bloody football game played between a team from Belgrade and a team from Zagreb, in Zagreb in May of 1990, two years before the actual breakup of the country. Our famed national basketball team was also barely holding at the time. Some say, on the other hand, that if Belgrade had won the bid to hold the summer Olympic games in 1984 or 1988 – after Sarajevo had hosted the winter ones, the country would never have fallen apart.
You will forgive me for taking you down this history lane, but it’s all to say how much impact sports, athletes, fans, and ordinary people around it, have. Impact to influence events, to instill change, to lead with example. At best, sports mirrors the best of us. And today with us, we have two stories to show you how. Thank you.
