Lord Bates
Main Page: Lord Bates (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Bates
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what preparations they are making for declaring the Olympic Truce accompanying the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Lord Bates
My Lords, it is my privilege to lead off in what I am reliably informed by the House of Lords Library is the first time that the Olympic truce has been debated specifically in your Lordships’ House. Perhaps I may express at the outset to the distinguished list of Members who have put their names forward to speak in this debate how grateful I am that they have rallied to the cause at such short notice. In securing this debate and in my enthusiasm to accept the time slot allotted by the business managers, I failed to recognise that many of the distinguished Members who would have wanted to take part are at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. In particular, my noble friends Lord Coe and Lord Moynihan have asked me to place on record their sincere apologies. They very much wanted to be here to support this debate, but unfortunately they cannot be.
On 7 October, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, as chairman of the British Olympic Association, spoke in this House of the importance of the Olympic truce in his excellent contribution to the millennium development goals debate. Following that, he wrote to me saying that he hoped that the Government would respond positively to this debate. In that regard, our chances of securing a positive response are much improved by the fact that my noble friend Lady Rawlings is responding on behalf of the Government, given her intuitive understanding and commitment to international relations.
The Olympic truce resolution, as passed by the United Nations,
“urges Member States to take the initiative to abide by the Truce, individually and collectively, and to pursue in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations the peaceful settlement of all international conflicts”.
Despite this UN resolution being agreed to by all member states, it has hitherto been totally ignored at a government level. Today, the Olympic truce is seen purely as symbolic, accompanied by a flag outside the stadium and a peace wall inside the Olympic village, but that was not always the case.
At the outset of the ancient Olympic Games, the truce was not an optional extra; it was its very purpose—it was not symbolic, but sacred. In 776 BC the Greek king, Iphitos, frustrated at the perpetual state of war, consulted the oracle at Delphi, who proposed a sporting competition every four years that would have as its aim the bringing together of military and political leaders in one place where they could seek to resolve their differences peacefully, with athletes competing together as Olympians rather than as citizens of a city state.
The sacred truce was remarkably successful. The ancient Olympics ran for 1,168 years, until they were ended by the Romans in AD 394, and during that time violations of the truce were extremely rare. By contrast, in the 116 years of the modern Olympiad, the Games have had to be cancelled three times due to war, have experienced major boycotts on five occasions and have twice been the focal point of terrorist attacks. In ancient Greece, people stopped fighting to take part in the Games; in the modern era, we stop the Games in order to keep fighting. What is it that we have lost in 3,000 years of civilisation that makes even today the notion that combatants may exercise restraint during a period of truce such a distant dream? I suggest not that the concept of the truce has been tried and found difficult but that it has been found difficult and left untried. To coin a phrase, I believe that we can do things differently next time.
The reason for this optimism is a remarkable visionary, Jeremy Gilley, a British documentary producer who began a campaign in 1997 to get the international community, through the United Nations, to advance one day of global peace—the campaign is called Peace One Day. In 2001, that campaign was endorsed unanimously by the United Nations—like the Olympic truce—and was proposed by the British Government. In 2007, 2008 and 2009, Peace One Day brokered a one-day truce in Afghanistan between warring factions, including the Taliban. The truce allowed health workers from UNICEF, the World Health Organisation and many other agencies to move into areas hitherto unreachable due to violent conflict. As a result, over a period of three years, some 4.5 million children were immunised against polio. It is an utterly inspiring story, which shows what can be done with just one day of truce, let alone the prospect of 20 or 30 days. This reminds us that the value lies not in the truce itself but in what it allows us to do. When the guns fall silent, the voices of reason have a chance to be heard above the bomb and the bullet and, when the guns stop, the delivery of vital humanitarian aid can start.
Specifically, I urge the Government to consider what initiatives they could take to exploit the opportunities presented by the Olympic truce surrounding the London 2012 Games. Could they consider hosting a G8-style summit on the theme of truce? The aspiration would be to seek to advance the case for peace and reconciliation in the same way that the talks at Gleneagles advanced the causes of debt relief and climate change. Could consideration be given to adding a ninth millennium development goal to create a specific target of reducing the current 30 conflicts around the world by 2015? Given the linkage between conflict and poverty, it is bewildering that conflict resolution is not even mentioned among the current eight goals, 21 targets and 60 measures. Could the UK leverage its unique roles in international organisations—the Commonwealth, the UN Security Council, the European Union, the G8 and the G20—to invite some parties currently engaged in conflict to the UK during the Games to undertake proximity talks, which just might advance a peaceful solution? Finally, could the Government work with Peace One Day to extend significantly the initiatives that it has secured for using the window of the truce to deliver humanitarian aid in the form of vaccinations and immunisations in the most dangerous and unreachable parts of this world? Others in the debate will be able to speak with far more experience and authority as to what initiatives may be possible but, where there is political will, I am convinced that our skilled diplomatic corps will be able to find a political way.
On 14 June, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, David Cameron, made a Statement on Afghanistan to the House of Commons, in which he concluded:
“Insurgencies usually end with political settlements—not military victories … we need a political process to bring the insurgency to an end”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/6/10; col. 605.]
This reminds us of the supremacy of politics and the deficiency, in the final equation, of violence as a means of achieving the lasting resolution of disputes. I believe that the Olympic truce represents a golden opportunity to advance a fresh vision of an international society, with the alluring prospect that the legacy of London 2012 will be not just sporting venues, medals won and records broken, but lives saved and hope restored. All that is required for that to happen is that, in their ambition, belief and courage, our athletes on the track and in the field are matched by politicians and diplomats in the corridors of power.