Corruption in sport: How does it affect Sport for Development and Peace?

The jailing of 3 Pakistani crickets for 'spot fixing' has had me thinking about the role corruption plays in sports contribution to peace and reconciliation.

Obviously corruption within a sport is very disruptive to the sport itself: match fixing for the sake of gamblers destroys the public confidence in the sport as well as being illegal. Siphoning off of funds for personal gains is almost irresistible, particularly in countries where such practices are more common that would be desired. As the Economist said in a 2009 article "when dishonesty brings high rewards and low penalties, crime is likely".  It isn't really surprising that many countries suffer from endemic corruption within their popular (and therefore influential) sporting federations.

Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) NGOs like to promote sport as a social building block. Participation in sport is said to promote all sorts of things, like teamwork, sense of fair play and leadership qualities. All useful stuff, particularly when scaled up to contribute to the fight against discrimination in fractured and vulnerable societies.

But my issue is this. Some SDP work is on-going, put together by committed volunteers who organise programmes that run and run (pardon the pun). But many NGOs prefer to operate workshops or one-off events. Many of these are very successful, with the participants taking on board some of the lessons being taught.

Then they go home and go back to playing and watching their domestic leagues, infiltrated with endemic corruption, cronyism and all that is bad with sport. The domestic leagues are there week in, week out and have been so for decades. The NGOs and SDP movement cannot hope to compete with the extent of their network or have their prominence. It seems to me that without addressing corruption within these networks it will remain a case of one step forward, 2 steps back and another opportunity to build peace falls by the way side.