Young people around the world are highly impacted by crime and violence, both as perpetrators and victims, and they are also at a key stage of life for learning and growing. For these reasons, and as asserted in the Doha Declaration, effective crime prevention requires the active engagement of youth.

The Youth Crime Prevention through Sport (YCP) initiative, developed to meet this goal, aims to promote sport and sport-based learning as a tool to prevent crime, violence and drug use among youth. Using sport to strengthen key personal and social skills and empower youth, engage communities and provide safe public spaces for positive youth development, , the initiative seeks to build youth and community resilience.

The role of sport as a tool for peace is also underlined by Member States with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, highlighting the contributions that sport can make to the empowerment of communities, to individuals – particularly women and young people – as well as to health, education and social inclusion. Similarly, the United Nations Action Plan on Sport for Development and Peace highlights sport as an important enabler of sustainable development and provides a framework of reference for Governments, civil society and the private sector to identify and promote the best ways sport can deliver towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Closely linked to SDG 16 and the achievement of peaceful and just societies, in 2019 the General Assembly adopted resolution 74/170 on Integrating sport into youth crime prevention and criminal justice strategies, which encouraged Member States to advance the integration of sports into cross-cutting crime prevention and criminal justice strategies, and called on UNODC to collect and disseminate good practices in this area.

The key areas of work of the Youth Crime Prevention through Sport initiative are:

• Development of technical tools and guidance on the effective use of sport for the prevention of youth crime and violence, including preventing violent extremism.
• Provision of technical assistance to Member States on the effective use of sport for crime prevention and the integration of sport into crime prevention and criminal justice strategies;
• Implementation of sports-based life skills training activities for young people in various settings (Line Up Live Up programme);
• Enhancing the capacity of professionals working with young people, including trainers, sport coaches, youth and community workers to use sport as a tool for skills development, youth engagement and learning.
• Design and implementation of community-based interventions and awareness-raising activities including sport and youth festivals and video campaigns;
• Facilitate access to sport through the provision of sport equipment and refurbishment of sports centres, schools and other sports-related community structures to promote the use of sport as a tool to create safe public spaces for meaningful engagement and positive interaction of young people; and
• Strengthen partnerships with and support civil society organizations through the provision of grants to reach out to vulnerable young people using sports-based programmes to build youth and community resilience to violence and crime;

The work of the Youth Crime Prevention through Sport initiative extends over a multitude of countries and engages partners from government, academia, civil society and the sport sector, both at national and local level. 

Youth Crime Prevention through Sport info sheet