IOC President Promises to Help Achieve UN Targets

(ATR) Thomas Bach tells the United Nations that the IOC’s reforms concerning good governance and transparency will allow it to fully contribute to Sustainable Development Goals.

The UN General Assembly on Saturday ratified the inclusion of sport in its post-2015 agenda program.

Paragraph 37 of the document titled "Transforming our World" reads: "Sport is also an important enabler of sustainable development. We recognise the growing contribution of sport to the realisation of development and peace in its promotion of tolerance and respect and the contributions it makes to the empowerment of women and of young people, individuals and communities as well as to health, education and social inclusion objectives."

Bach hailed what he labeled a "historic" moment for sport. On Sunday, Bach participated in an interactive session at the UN in New York on building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions to achieve sustainable development.

Speaking about the Agenda 2020 reforms program rubberstamped at the IOC Session in Monaco last December, Bach said the IOC was now aligned with the UN initiative.

"If you want to enjoy credibility as an organization, then you have to be accountable, you need to be effective and you need to be inclusive," he said. "Therefore we have established a system of good governance which makes us accountable."

"This system of good governance comprises: term and age limits, comprises auditing to higher standards than requested by law, the full transparency of our financial flows, comprises open and transparent rules for decision making and addresses clear zero tolerance policy with regard to any kind of corruption," he added.

His comments could be seen as attempting to put some distance between the IOC and FIFA, whose escalating corruption crisis is giving global sports administrators a bad name. FIFA has neither term or age limits, but reforms may bring those changes.

The IOC chief’s message to the UN came two days after Swiss authorities launched criminal proceedings against FIFA president Sepp Blatter on "suspicion of criminal mismanagement and misappropriation".

Mired in a series of scandals, FIFA and Blatter are at their lowest ebb in the federation’s 111-year history. A new reforms process is underway led by former IOC director general Francois Carrard, while a FIFA congress on Feb. 26 is set to elect a new president.

Bach said the measures implemented by the IOC meant it could distribute 90 percent of all revenues to the development of sport worldwide.

"Since we need only 10 percent for our administrative costs we are distributing every day of the year 3.25 million dollars to athletes sports organizations, for educational, and health purposes all around the world," Bach told delegates.

"Being inclusive is in the Olympic DNA because in Olympic sport all people are equal. There is no discrimination for whatever reason and, to make this even more clear, we have amended the document which governs the Olympic Games, the Olympic Charter, in a way that fully reflects in its wording the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights," he added.

Olympic Talks with Japanese PM

Bach held talks with more than a dozen heads of state and world leaders in New York including Japanese Prime Minister Abe.

The two discussed the role of sport in society, in particular as an "important enabler of sustainable development," and Tokyo’s trouble-hit preparations for the 2020 Olympics. Abe axed the Olympic stadium project in July due to soaring costs and faced an embarrassing setback with the scrapping its logo earlier this month over a plagiarism scandal.

According to an IOC statement, Bach thanked Abe and his government "for all they were doing in supporting the role of sport and fully respecting the autonomy of sport".

"Prime Minister Abe expressed his great confidence that the national stadium would be finished by January 2020 in time for all the necessary tests and preparations for the Olympic Games," the IOC said.

The IOC is currently helping with the tender process for what will be a 68,000-seat stadium, with costs capped at $1.4 billion by the Japanese government.

Reported by Mark Bisson

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