The 'Line Up, Live Up' curriculum is currently piloted in 11 countries around the globe, including in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, building the capacity of sports coaches, teachers and community workers by enabling them to use sport as a tool for prevention of violence and crime among youth.
One of the important elements of the initiative is to facilitate access to sports for youth, especially those from marginalised communities, as well as through the refurbishment of sports centres and schools. In Tajikistan, UNODC supported the renovation of a sports centre on taekwondo and archery in Dushanbe, in order to improve the condition of the facility and increase local youth's access to sports. While in Kyrgyzstan, two additional sports centres were renovated in Osh and Mailyy-Suu cities.
Children playing team sports together not only get the physical benefits of activity and the advantages of teamwork, but they can also learn valuable skills which they can apply in numerous other settings. Sports programmes have therefore increasingly given weight to these factors, using games and physical activities to teach young people how to resist social pressures to engage in delinquency, crime and drugs, how to cope with anxiety, and how to communicate effectively with peers, amongst other life skills. UNODC's own Line Up, Live Up initiative, has been launched for the first time in the Middle East and North Africa region, in the State of Palestine, in cooperation with the Higher Council for Youth and Sport and the Ministry of Education.
Nearly every aspect of crime and justice was brought up in Vienna during last month's 28 th Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), in what was a very eventful week for UNODC and for its Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration. Of direct relevance to the Programme's component on sports were two resolutions on crime prevention that were tabled and passed by the CCPCJ, the principle policymaking body of the United Nations in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice.
Titled " Strengthening the engagement of all members of society in crime prevention," the first resolution in question stresses the importance of fostering partnerships with civil society and the private sector for prevention.
The practice of sports is receiving increasing attention as a powerful tool for crime prevention, especially in dealing with the younger generation. For UNODC's Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration, Youth Crime Prevention through Sports has been an active component since 2016, promoting holistic crime prevention policies and raising awareness on the importance of sports-based activities; they aim at keeping youth away from crime and teaching them life skills to help them deal with their circumstances.
As with its various components promoting a culture of lawfulness, UNODC partners with other international organization around the world, and its cooperation with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) builds on the Joint Action Plan for 2018-2019.
Last week, the head of UNODC's Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration, Marco Teixeira, was interviewed by MTV (one of the most prominent regional channels in Lebanon and the Arab world), on its renowned MTV Alive show. He spoke about the Global Programme's mission to promote a culture of lawfulness, through the various activities and resources of its four components. Below are some excerpts from the interview (edited for clarity).
