In 2014, Hanna Hemrom sought the help of her teacher who persuaded some parents to let their daughters play football. They formed the Rangatungi United Women Football Academy, which teaches football to girls, helping them feel empowered. Courtesy: Young Bangla

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 18 2019 (IPS)

For too long, women and girls have been excluded from the playing field—literally. But now, many are paving the way in the fight against gender inequality through sports.

Sports is being increasingly used as a tool for empowering girls around the world, helping challenge gender norms on and off the field.

Studies have found that promoting sports among girls can not only help improve their physical health, but also build self-esteem, courage, and leadership.

Just last month, United Nations Women and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) joined forces to host the Women and Sports Awards which celebrated some of the change makers who have helped advance women and girls through sport.

One such role model is Po Chun Liu who overcame numerous obstacles to become the first female baseball umpire in Taiwan and make the Forbes’ 2018 list of the most powerful women in international sports.

She continues to create opportunities for girls and women to get involved with sport, helping “strike out gender discrimination.”

“It’s our responsibility to empower girls and women so they’ll realise their full potential and take charge of their life…to help a girl is to help a family,” said Liu.

IOC’s President Thomas Bach echoed similar sentiments, stating: “Sports give girls and women self-confidence…especially in countries where women’s rights aren’t a top priority yet, there’s a tremendous benefit to women’s and girls’ participation in sport.”

“In today’s world, no organisation or country can afford to let half of the population be left behind – either in sport or in society. Advancing women in and through sport is truly a team effort. By joining hands and working together, sport can inspire the necessary change and lead the way,” he added.

https://youtu.be/2Nt0caBkYdw

In the small village of Rangatungi in Bangladesh, Hanna Hemrom is leading the way to achieve this vision.

Formed in 2014, the Rangatungi United Women Football Academy teaches football to girls, helping them feel empowered.

After only seeing boys on the field, Hemrom sought the help of her teacher who persuaded some parents to let their daughters play football.

“When the other girls and I walked from home to the football fields, people use to taunt us. They said we would not be able to get married because we wear shorts and play football. But we still carried on playing,” she recalled, adding that they struggled to persuade others to play.

But with persistence and determination, girls continue to express interest and join the team, helping transform Hemrom and her fellow teammates’ lives.

“I am a Santal girl who used to be very shy and didn’t mix with Bengali girls. Football has brought me close to other girls – Muslim, Hindu and we all play together now,” Hemrom said.

“I think football is a good habit. Earlier girls in our village used to do nothing or just talk over phone or indulge in some silly things. We now play football with the girls and boys of our village,” she added.

In 2016, the Rangatungi United Women Football team competed in the under 14 national football competition and a year later, they became the champions in the Rangpur division.

Now the girls have even bigger dreams, aspiring to play for the national team and hoping to inspire others to dream big too.

Young Bangla, the largest youth forum in Bangladesh, recognised the Rangatungi United Women Football Academy as one of the top 10 youth initiatives in the country.

A video ad is being screened before every match at the Africa Cup of Nations currently under way in Equatorial Guinea. Part of African Football Against Hunger, a joint initiative by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Confederation of African Football (CAF), it shows a player dribbling a football, taking a shot and scoring – the winning kick is a metaphor for ending hunger in Africa by 2025.

“Football, like no other game, brings people together, within nations and across country lines. It’s exactly this type of coming together we need to reach the goal of zero hunger in Africa,” FAO Director of Communications Mario Lubetkin told IPS in an online interview.

As part of the African Football Against Hunger campaign, a video ad is being featured at matches throughout the 2015 African Cup of Nations tournament in Equatorial Guinea. Credit: FAO

“Our aim is to harness the popularity of football to raise awareness of the ongoing fight against hunger on the continent, and to rally support for home-grown initiatives that harness Africa’s economic successes to fund projects that help communities in areas struggling with food insecurity and build resilient livelihoods,” he explained.

Last year, African governments came together and undertook to wipe out chronic hunger among their peoples by 2025, in line with the United Nations’ Zero Hunger campaign.

Hunger in Africa is pervasive.  In 2014, some 227 million people across the continent suffered from hunger. According to FAO’s 2014 ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World’ report, one in four people across sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished.“Football, like no other game, brings people together, within nations and across country lines. It’s exactly this type of coming together we need to reach the goal of zero hunger in Africa” – Mario Lubetkin, FAO Director of Communications

And despite its vast fertile lands and a youth bulge, Africa continuous to spend over 40 billion dollars every year on food imports, according to Tumusiime Rhoda Peace, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture for the African Union Commission (AUC).

“The fact that the continent’s population is growing means that while Africa has made progress in hunger eradication over the last decade, the total number of hungry people on the continent has risen. This brings additional urgency to fund home-grown solutions that allow families and communities to strengthen food security and build resilient livelihoods,” Lubetkin told IPS.

Placing a more direct link between football and the fight against hunger, he said adequate nutrition is essential to both cognitive and physical development and to achieving one’s goals – none of the players in the cup would be able to perform at the level they do without adequate nutrition.

“The human potential that is lost by persistent hunger is still immense. It is in the interest of everybody to join forces to make hunger history. Fighting hunger is a team sport – we need everybody to get involved,” he explained.

It is estimated that over 650 million people worldwide will be watching the African Cup of Nations, which this year sees teams from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, D.R. Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia and Zambia competing for the trophy from Jan. 17 to Feb. 8.

The initiators of the African Football Against Hunger campaign hope that with the enormous number of people exposed to the campaign, more citizens will become engaged in the struggle against hunger.

“History shows that when citizens are engaged governments are encouraged to allocate funding to hunger eradication,” Lubetkin said. “Citizen engagement also often leads communities to come together to find innovative solutions for shared problems.”

He went on to explain that football events are also being used to spread the message about the work of the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund for Food Security, which was set up by African leaders in 2013, and to encourage countries to become involved in the Fund as donors, project partners and sources of local knowledge.

“The on-the-ground work is done through the Fund, through projects that increase youth employment, improve resource management, make livelihoods more resilient and eradicate hunger by building sustainable food production.”

So far the Fund has leveraged 40 million dollars from African countries to empower communities in 30 countries by building job opportunities for young people, help them use their available resources better and bounce back quicker in situations of crisis.

FAO and the Fund are complementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAAADP), a continent-wide initiative to boost agricultural productivity in Africa. Launched by governments 10 years ago, CAADP has been instrumental in bringing agriculture back to the discussion table as a priority sector, according to Komla Bissi, Senior CAADP Advisor at the AUC.

“Our governments are recommitting resources, and it’s time to bring the private sector on board,” he told IPS. He said 43 of Africa’s 54 countries have so far committed to the process; 40 have signed the CAADP compact and 30 of them have developed agriculture sector investment plans.

“The job of eradicating hunger and making food production sustainable is a long-haul game and these ongoing projects – along with future ones – are the seeds of progress in the fight against hunger,” Lubetkin concluded.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Majidah Nantanda is Uganda’s first female national coach for the country’s women’s football team. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
KAMPALA, Aug 23 2014 (IPS)

Growing up with five brothers, soccer-mad Majidah Nantanda had half a team to compete against at home in Makindye, a suburb in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. But at her school, in the 1990s, there were two sports rules: “Netball for the girls and football for the boys,” recalls the 32-year-old, as she stands on the sidelines of a boy’s game in Makindye.

“So I’d sneak out of netball to watch the boys play.”

From the age of eight, her brothers realised they had some fierce competition so they introduced her to the neighbourhood boys, who Nantanda would play with during her holidays.

“My mum never told me you’re not supposed to play football,” Nantanda tells IPS, adding her single mother, a businesswoman, bought her a kit and later gave her transport money to go to games.

Despite only getting a chance to perfect her talent in her spare time, it didn’t stop the Ugandan from captaining the first national women’s football team before becoming the first female national coach in 2007.

The country’s sports fans have been encouraged recently by Ugandan Stephen Kiprotich picking up gold in the men’s marathon in the London 2012 Olympics, and countryman Moses Kipsiro winning the 10,000m at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow earlier this month.

But “there is no sport that promotes Uganda more than football”, Federation of Uganda Football Association (FUFA) spokesperson Ahmed Hussein insists.

“Even if people go and win medals at international level [in other sports], nothing beats football,” Hussein tells IPS.

Nantanda says women playing football in Uganda has become more accepted over the past 15 years.

Today in this East African country there are at least 64 girls’ schools competing in the annual national secondary girls football championships, and many other women who aspire to be the next Nantanda.

This month, in fact, a team of 18 female footballers from Uganda could have travelled to Canada to participate in the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup.

“They would have been so happy. For most of them it would have been their first time on a plane, and for all of them, the first time in North America,” says Nantanda, who would have made the journey with them as coach.

But instead of being cheered on by their country some 5,000km away in Ghana, the ladies, aged between 16 and 20 years, are getting on with their lives after having their hopes dashed at the last minute by a governing body that hasn’t grasped the potential of Uganda’s female football players, says Nantanda.

Nantanda says just three days before the match in Ghana, FUFA announced on radio that they had withdrawn the team, citing a lack of funds.

“Women’s football is not a priority for the nation,” says the coach.

“We are not catered for like the men’s national team.”

She adds: “The Cranes [the men’s national team] are paid a lot of money but women, they don’t take us seriously.”

A total of 25 aspiring sports stars, coached by Nantanda, trained for months while also studying at school or university and while holding down part-time jobs.

Last September, the women beat neighbouring South Sudan 13-0 on home soil in Kampala.

In defence, Hussein says Uganda is the only country among FIFA’s 209 members that doesn’t have an annual designated budget from the government. He stresses that although the government is “passionate” about the game, often approaching with support, the money they give isn’t enough.

FUFA are funded by local corporations such as Airtel, NIC and Nile Breweries, ticket sales and FIFA development grants.

The United Nations have stressed the potential contribution that sport can make towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), stressing it is about participation, inclusion and citizenship, and a certain percentage of FUFA grants must be spent on women’s football along with youth soccer and refereeing.

In 2004, Uganda’s football association was warned by FIFA that if they continued to use their yearly grant for the national team they risked losing it. In the past, FUFA have also denied corruption claims.

Nantanda sympathises with the girls. After all she has had her struggles.

“Not everyone’s happy that I’m a national coach,” she says, adding most soccer coaches in Uganda are male.

“A woman doing something different will straight away be attacked by men.

She adds: “If you’re not [emotionally] strong enough you’ll just give up.”

But that’s something Nantanda has never done, even when she’s been the only female alongside 60 men at an elite coaching session.

“I interact with these men and I do everything they do,” she says.

As one of only a few female FIFA-recognised referees in Uganda, Irene Namubiru, 34, has also smashed her own goals.

“[Women] enjoy playing football,” Namubiru tells IPS. “But they fear officiating because of the abuses, the insults from the fans, so they hold back.”

Nantanda doesn’t know when the under 20s team will play next.

Many women have stopped training and forgotten about football altogether.

Hussein says their Ghana match coincided with the men’s senior team travelling to South Africa for the African Nations Championship finals. Both competitions would have cost the federation “well over” 400 million shillings (153,552 dollars).

“People believe that the national senior team should be given a lot of precedence, as opposed to the women’s team or even to junior teams,” says Hussein.

“But we’re looking at entering the women’s team in future international tournaments.”

He says there could be a pilot project in the next couple of years in Uganda to form a women’s national football league.

“We believe that if the women’s team is properly handled they can get their own funding from different companies, the corporate world could come in and support them,” he says.

Nantanda still speaks to her under 20s and encourages them to train. But the coach, who admits she does mostly “volunteer work”, says she is putting more of her effort into “grassroots development”, encouraging girls in villages across Uganda to take up football through her charity Growing the Game for Girls.

Through Tackle Africa, Nantanda she is also getting rural communities hooked on football to teach them about HIV prevention and management.

There’s one piece of advice she gives all women, regardless of whether they have an upcoming tournament.

“Continue with your studies,” she reiterates.

“You won’t get paid through football.

“It’s not only about playing for the national team. I want these girls to be better women in the future and not waste their education.”

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The writer can be contacted on Twitter @amyfallon 

Kids from a poor neighbourhood in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, kick around a football. They are excited ahead of the the FIFA World Cup, for which Cameroon has qualified a record seven times. Courtesy: Ngala Killian Chimtom

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jun 11 2014 (IPS)

It is almost 6pm. A group of kids are plying their craft in a dusty, dirty courtyard in a poor neighbourhood in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital. That craft is football.  They kick the once-white-but-now-brown, aged football around. One child is barefoot, the other wears worn shoes and is dressed in the kit of the national team. 

“I want to play like [Lionel] Messi,” one of kids called Jack tells IPS as his voice rises above the rest of the excited crowd. “I am Eto’o…I am Ronaldo…Pepe…Rooney…,” the kids start shouting, each one of them giving the name of his dream football star.

Samuel Eto’o is Cameroon’s football star, he plays forward for English club Chelsea, and will be leading the national team, known worldwide as the Indomitable Lions, in this year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil.Football is more than just a game here “it is a religion,” -- sports journalist Fon Echeckiye.

Cristiano Ronaldo, is the famous Portuguese footballer who plays as a forward for Spanish club Real Madrid, and Pepe is the nickname for his fellow club member, Képler Laveran Lima Ferreira. Wayne Rooney is an English football star who punters predict will take the upcoming football world cup by storm.

With just a day to go before the proposed start of the world cup from the Jun. 12 – Jul. 13, Brazilians have begun protests and strikes in demand of higher wages. There have been numerous reports of corruption and rights violations during the public works to prepare for the event.

But here in this Central African nation, the kids are oblivious to this and have big dreams and big ambitions. And this reflects the deeper passions that drive football in Cameroon — a country that will be participating in this year’s World Cup for a record seven times — more than any other African team.

Football is more than just a game here “it is a religion,” sports journalist Fon Echeckiye tells IPS.

A fan of the Indomitable Lions, Cameroon’s national team. This central African nation has qualified for the FIFA World Cup a record seven time. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

Cameroon for all its football glory has only two standard football stadiums, one in Yaounde and the other in Garoua in the country’s Far North Region. Despite the poor infrastructure here, the love for football runs really deep in Cameroon.

According to the African Economic Outlook, although Cameroon has abundant natural resources “revenues obtained from the exploitation of these resources, and from oil in particular, have not been sufficiently channelled into structural investments in infrastructure and the productive sectors.”

“In our day, each time we were faced with an opponent, we thought about nothing else than the national flag,” Thomas Nkono, the retired ace Cameroon keeper who was once nick-named “the Black Spider,” because of his acrobatic saves, tells IPS.

Of Cameroon’s estimated 20 million people, some 39.9 percent are affected by poverty.

“It was always a good feeling to know that millions of Cameroonians — poor and wretched alike — could abandon their daily bread and butter concerns to support the team. It always gave us an added motivation,” he muses.

That feeling amongst players hasn’t changed much. On the sidelines of the Lions’ last preparatory match for the 2014 FIFA World Cup against Moldova on Saturday, Jun. 7, striker, Achille Webo told IPS “it’s true some of us who play professional football earn a lot of money, but to see crowds like this is not something money can buy. It is highly motivating.”

Ngando Picket, a Lions’ supporter who accompanies the team everywhere, says over the years he’s composed more than three hundred songs in support of the team.

He speaks breathlessly as he strains to sing and dance. Ngando tells IPS: “The boys always need to know that the nation, the people stand behind them and I work daily to fulfil that role. I believe the singing and dancing we put on from the stands fires the boys up and that alone keeps them up to steam.

“We are travelling to Brazil to do so, and I believe Cameroon will create a lot of surprises.”

Across the board, supporters, initially sceptical about the team’s form ahead of the tournament, now seem to have gained in hope, after the tie with Germany in a warm up game.

“That match reminds me of 1990 when the Lions stunned the world with a 1-0 win over Argentina [then holders of the World Cup title] in the opening match of that year’s world cup,” says Benjamin Ngah, a taxi driver in Yaounde. The team eventually became the first African nation to qualify for the quarter final of a world cup tournament.

“I believe we have got the quality to accomplish the same exploit this year, or perhaps go further,” he tells IPS.

A football game in Jacarezinho, one of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. For children from these poor neighbourhoods, the pomp surrounding the World Cup is a distant echo. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 6 2014 (IPS)

It seemed like “a good deal” at the time, but then things changed. That description of the 2006 purchase of a U.S. refinery, one of the oil industry scandals hanging over the Brazilian government’s head, could also apply to attitudes towards the FIFA World Cup.

In 2007, the fact that Brazil was chosen to host the 2014 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) global championship triggered a sense of national euphoria. The mega sporting event would crown the economic ascent of this emerging power, which has won the most World Cups – five out of 18.

But now, instead of planning welcome parties for the Jun. 12-Jul. 13 tournament, Brazilians are taking to the streets in protests that are blocking traffic and bringing cities to a halt, holding strikes to demand wage hikes, and complaining about corruption and rights violations during the public works to prepare for the global event.

The country of football and joy is turning its back on its stereotype.

In Rio de Janeiro, the few streets decorated in green and yellow – the colours of the national team – contrast with the celebrations and sense of anticipation ahead of previous World Cups. The enthusiasm has been dampened just when Brazil is hosting the world’s biggest single-sport event.

The indignation of Brazilians erupted in June 2013, with surprising and often violent protests against the poor performance of the health and education systems, chaotic traffic, corruption, and the enormous amounts being spent on preparations for the World Cup.

Worried about further unrest, the government has ordered the deployment of 157,000 police and military troops to guarantee security during the games that will be held in 12 cities in this enormous country of nearly 200 million people.

But the declining excitement over football “is a tendency that has been seen in the last three World Cups,” said Paulo Santos, who has worked as a barber for 40 years in a lower middle-class Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood and hears the views of hundreds of clients, in a kind of ongoing informal opinion poll.

Hosting the World Cup should have revived the passion of fans.

But “they’re holding the party with other people’s money – ours,” complained Santos, reflecting the widespread sensation that the whole exercise has been marked by corruption, the squandering of public funds and FIFA’s greed.

Surveys reflect this view. In February, only 52 percent of those interviewed by the Datafolha polling institute were in favour of organising the World Cup, down from 79 percent in 2008.

The most recent poll, limited to the southern city of São Paulo, found that 45 percent of respondents were in favour and 43 percent were against, while the rest said they didn’t care. But worse than that was the fact that an overwhelming majority, 76 percent, said they thought the country wasn’t prepared to host the marathon of 64 games among 32 national teams.

Many of the projects planned, especially the urban transport works, were not carried out or were left incomplete. Some of the 12 stadiums were not finished until the last minute, without the finishing touches and without being tested. Half of them lack wireless Internet connection.

Delays in infrastructure works are a tradition in Brazil. The same thing happened in the first World Cup, held in Brazil in 1950. The main stadium, Maracaná in Rio de Janeiro, was inaugurated only a few days before the event, in the midst of a muddy construction site littered with left-over materials.

It was the world’s largest stadium. Designed for 155,250 spectators, it held a crowd of over 200,000 in the final match. Now, remodelled and sumptuous, it holds just under 74,700 people.

But the current megalomania is different. Since the last decade, Brazil has been caught up in a frenzy of building hydropower dams, railways, ports, highways and freeways, in an attempt to overcome the infrastructure deficit accumulated over the preceding two decades.

Most of the major projects are years behind. The main railway, a 4,155-km north-south route, has been under construction for 27 years, with only one-third of the rails installed.

Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana stadium, remodelled for the World Cup. Excessive spending on the installations is one of the complaints being voiced by protesters in Brazil. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

But no delays are possible in the case of the preparations for the World Cup in 12 cities and for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

The looming deadlines may have been a factor in some of the accidents that have caused the deaths of nine workers in the World Cup stadiums, seven of them employed by subcontractors.

The rise in the number of workers concentrated in large construction sites all around the country has empowered construction workers. After a number of strikes, they secured wage hikes and benefits such as more frequent visits home for those who are working in distant regions.

But working conditions are still unsafe and accidents have been frequent, almost always due to lack of protection measures such as safe scaffolding, said Vitor Filgueiras, an economist investigating the phenomenon in his postdoctoral research.

Outsourcing is “a way of transferring risks,” and it makes working conditions even more unsafe and can even give rise to slave-like labour, he argued.

The World Cup has been a common focus for the recent protests and strikes by students, teachers, bus drivers and other groups. But popular support for the street demonstrations and battles has dropped sharply, according to opinion polls – luckily for the government of Dilma Rousseff.

A year ago, 54 percent of those surveyed by the Vox Populi Institute supported the protests, compared to just 18 percent today.

That reduces the risk of massive demonstrations during the World Cup itself. But groups made up of a few dozen activists are now paralysing cities, in a kind of guerrilla warfare benefited by the constant traffic jams.

The October presidential and legislative elections are also politicising football. The World Cup and the government are linked in the public’s mind. A failure for Brazil, in the stadiums or in the organisation of the event, would drive up the number of votes for the opposition.

The president is still the clear front-runner, but football has taken on growing influence in the elections, added to other government initiatives that also sounded like a good idea at the time – but don’t any longer.

For example, the purchase of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas by Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras was supposed to boost the firm’s international expansion and enable it to refine heavy crude in the U.S. market.

But it cost three times the initial contract for 360 million dollars, and became less important because Brazil increased its production of light crude oil. The case is under investigation by oversight bodies and amplified other scandals involving Petrobras.

Measures to reduce the cost of electricity in 2012 and benefit both industry and households also turned out to be a disaster. They encouraged consumption at a time when a lengthy drought reduced hydropower generation, unleashing an energy crisis, with the threat of power outages.

The discontent, also fuelled by a high inflation rate and a sluggish economy, infected the World Cup, which was already affected by specific factors of its own. FIFA’s demands for extraordinary terms and conditions created “a state of emergency,” wrote labour judge Lygia Cavalcanti in the magazine published by the Judges for Democracy Association.

Brazil agreed to “a temporary suspension” of certain laws guaranteeing citizens’ freedom of movement and workers’ right to strike in order to hold the World Cup, she said.

In addition, FIFA was given exclusive rights to advertise, sell and distribute products within a two-kilometre radius around the stadiums, local residents were evicted and relocated, and 18,000 volunteers have been organised to work during the World Cup, even though under Brazilian law volunteer work can only be used by non-profit cultural, civic or welfare institutions.

In addition, FIFA was given the right to file and fast-track registration of any trademark it wanted relating to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil’s patent office, including around 200 commonly used words, expressions and symbols such as names using “2014”, like “Brazil 2014” or “Natal 2014”, which can only be used commercially this year if fees are paid to FIFA.

FIFA even charged the Alzirão Recreational and Cultural Association 28,000 reals (12,500 dollars) to organise the popular street party it has held since 1978 in Rio de Janeiro, where the Brazil matches are shown on a giant screen

Alzirão was going to have to pay broadcasting rights, because more than 30,000 people a day watch the games on the big screen.

But Mayor Eduardo Paes managed to convince FIFA to exempt the non-profit event, said Ricardo Ferreira, president of the cultural association.

Ferreira told IPS that the excitement for the World Cup “was lukewarm but is growing.” A triumph by Brazil in the opening game in the São Paulo’s Corinthians stadium could cheer people up and bring back the passion, he added.

Football is gaining ground among the young in baseball-crazed Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Sep 20 2013 (IPS)

It is unusual to see Cuban sports legends in public service announcements. However, a handful of champions and rising young stars are wearing messages or appearing in TV spots against violence among men or toward women.

“We can reach our fans with campaigns like this one,” Daniel Luis, a member of Cuba’s under-20 football team, told IPS. And such campaigns “are also helpful in professional training for young athletes like me,” he added.

Luis is one of a number of athletes who have joined the Cuban branch of the Ibero-American and African Masculinities Network (RIAM), an umbrella group that brings together more than seven million men and women in 40 countries on three continents who are trying to overcome “machista” stereotypes.“Fans attack players or the rival team with racist, homophobic and machista language” -- sportscaster Alejandro Céspedes

RIAM began investigating violence in sports in 2007. This year, it has attracted dozens of athletes to participate in preventive actions. In Cuba, athletes had never been involved in anything like it.

“It has to do with social immobility. It had never occurred to us to try to involve them in campaigns like this,” RIAM Cuba coordinator Julio César González Páges told IPS.

However, it is key to do so, because “nowadays, people follow athletes much more than politicians or social leaders.”

The athletes wear pro-peace messages in games in Havana, Pinar del Río (in the west) and Matanzas (east). Cuba’s youth football team – the first in history to classify for an international championship – also brought messages against domestic abuse to this year’s FIFA U-20 World Cup in Turkey, held in June and July.

These are the public expressions, which are the result of a slower task: athletes are trained in workshops and talks at sports schools in Havana and in Pinar del Río.

To spread the word, on Aug. 30 RIAM launched the UNETE Athletes Network for non-violence against women and girls. Eugenio George, who was declared the world’s best women’s volleyball coach of the 20th century, and footballers Luis Torres, Abel Martínez and Andy Baquero were the network’s founding members.

In joining, athletes promise to be ambassadors of a culture of peace and non-violence. The network is open to all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of the UNiTE To End Violence Against Women campaign led by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

By February, a group of about 70 Cuban athletes had been created, 30 of whom are Olympic or world champions, such as high jumper Javier Sotomayor and boxer Félix Savón. The group has produced TV spots.

“It’s great to send out these messages, but curbing this problem requires a lot of time spent on educational work and strengthening laws,” says store clerk Alejandro Roque, a football fan. “The stadiums are very violent, and even more so when key baseball games are being held,” he adds.

During the 2010-2011 National Baseball Series, about 50 athletes and 26 coaches were expelled for poor behaviour.

“Fans attack players or the rival team with racist, homophobic, regionalist, and machista language,” sportscaster Alejandro Céspedes told IPS.

A homemade video that is circulating in different formats depicts a major scuffle between members of Havana’s Industriales baseball team and the Sancti Spíritus team that occurred in 2010 at the José Antonio Huelga stadium in the city of Sancti Spíritus in central Cuba.

“Our main target is men, especially young men,” said González Pagés. The strategy, therefore, is to focus on footballers, heroes of a sport that is becoming increasingly popular among young people in this baseball-crazed country.

In a survey that RIAM conducted in 2012 among 5,000 teens and young people in 18 Cuban cities, football was the favourite sport of 87 percent of the respondents.

Coach Darién Díaz told IPS: “The more that interest grows, the more the stands fill up during games. We have to do preventive work, talk to the athletes, show them audiovisual materials, and teach them how to manage situations of violence.” And the first goal is to eradicate acts of violence from the sports scene.

Perhaps because football is just now gaining ground in Cuba, this country is relatively safe from the extreme violence associated with that sport in Latin America and other regions. Brazil leads the list worldwide, with 23 football-related deaths in 2012, according to a study by the University of Salgado de Oliveira in that country.

In Latin America, hooligans are known as “barras bravas”, and the groups are often associated with the leaders of football clubs and with illegal activities, such as drug trafficking.

Street children in Karachi prepare for their World Cup next year. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS.

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Apr 7 2013 (IPS)

Oblivious to the cloud of dust they have kicked up in just a few minutes, panting and sweating, moving lithely, this way, then that, they jostle the ball smoothly until one team scores a goal.

There’s a loud cheer. Wiping the sweat off his brow, young Iman Hussain throws up his hands in frustration, looks with displeasure at the scoreboard, and shouts: “Concentrate, you guys!”

Just 12, Hussain is among a motley group of boisterous young boys who are having a practice match of football at one of Karachi Municipal Council (KMC) sports complex grounds in Karachi. Of all sizes, and aged between 10 and 16, they have been selected after Karachi-wide trials to form the Street Strikers. It will be among teams from 20 countries to compete for the 2014 Street Child World Cup, to be held in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.

Clad in a black-and-red striped T-shirt, black shorts, knee-high black socks and shoes, Hussain is known for his agility, but as much for his temper. “They like my passing and that is why I have been chosen for the team,” he tells IPS proudly.

Hussain, till a few years ago, was a deft pickpocket, living off the streets of Karachi. He is among Pakistan’s 1.2 million to 1.5 million children living on the streets. He had run away from home when he was just seven because his older brother used to “tie him up” and beat him blue for not “paying attention to studies.” Son of a fisherman, he has five brothers and six sisters.

Today, he has been reintegrated back into his family, has joined school and counts football among his foremost passions. “I want to show the world I am good at something!” he says, adding a little excitedly: “It will be my first time on an airplane!”

The initiative was taken by Azad Foundation (AF), a non-governmental organisation that has been working for Karachi’s street children since 2001. They provide meals, shelter, healthcare and education through three drop-in centres to close to 3,500 of Karachi’s over 12,000 street children. Currently, a little over 100 among them are going through various stages of a rehabilitation process, and will finally get reintegrated.

Since the beginning of the year, AF has started a five-year Sports for Development project. “In Karachi, we are working in three (of the 18 administrative units) and in the rest of the three provinces, we are collaborating with organisations already working with street children,” Ali Bilgrami, who heads the sports project, tells IPS. “Initially, we will focus on football, but if there is demand for other sports we can always include cricket and hockey.” However, he emphasises, it will have to be a team sport.

Itfan Maqbool, spokesperson for AF, hopes the World Cup will help in “educating society to the realities of the issue of street children and how these children survive, fending for themselves.”

These boys have been training for over three months now and have played matches with other teams who have been playing for many years. A lot has changed since then – most of all, their behaviour.

“They have certainly become less aggressive,” says Maqbool.

Coach Haris Jadoon finds that the kids have been able to work on anger management issues to quite an extent. “When we started, I found them a much rowdier bunch, refusing to do their warm-up exercises or follow rules or even pay heed to the whistle. All they wanted to do was to get hold of the ball and start playing.

“Losing was unthinkable for them and throwing a tantrum, getting angry and crying was common. Slowly, however, they realised that it’s a team sport and they can win only if they work as a team,” he says.

He adds: “Through the process of teaching them the rules of the game, we teach them qualities like fairness, hard work, honesty, while building their confidence and communication skills.”

Sadia Ahmed, a psychologist with AF, knows each boy well and says her job has been made much easier ever since the boys started playing football. “It’s half my job done,” she says. “They are much happier, easier to manage and more receptive to you. I also find many have grown taller and bigger in the last couple of months,” she tells IPS.

For Itfan, however, the biggest success has been that since they started playing, quite a number of the boys have been more amenable to reintegrating into family life, which is the ultimate aim of the foundation.

Owais Ali, 16, plays as a defender. He left home when he was seven. He says he got tired of being continuously hit by his parents. He returned home when he was 13, but “I have an older brother who had also run away before me and has not returned,” he says.

“It’s a hard life out there,” he says, reflecting on the realities of the street child experience. “You cannot imagine what a seven-year old goes through on the streets of Karachi – he is harassed by street gangs and the police. Many are abused physically as well as sexually.” Ali also confesses to having smoked hashish.

At the same time, the lure of a life free from family restrictions, poverty, school and housework is enough to make many want to continue where they are, Maqbool points out.

“We are trying to make them realise what it means to live within the folds of a family. Just like in sports, a family is like a team where each member takes care of the other and helps make the team a success. At the same time, parents too have to realise that these children need love, affection and respect. Both sides have to overcome their past and move on,” says Maqbool. (END)

One victim of the remodelling of Brazil’s Maracaná football stadium in preparation for the World Cup is the old Museum of the Indian, where people from different indigenous groups have attempted to keep their culture alive in the heart of Rio de Janeiro.

“It is as if they were killing part of us, as if we were losing a piece of ourselves, because in this place, our ancestors left behind their memory, their struggle,” Garapira Pataxó, a member of the Pataxó indigenous group, told IPS in an interview after the Rio de Janeiro state government confirmed the decision to demolish the ruins of the building, which sits across from the stadium.

The authorities say the decrepit former Museu do Indiao must go in order to make it easier to access the Estádio Jornalista Mário Filho, known as the Maracaná Stadium, which for the second time in history will host a World Cup final.

The building to be demolished was built 147 years ago. In 1953, it became the first headquarters of the Museu do Indiao, created by the late anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro. But in 1978 the museum was moved to an old manor house in the Botafogo neighbourhood on the south side of the city.

The old building also housed the Indian Protection Service when it was first created – an agency that was later replaced by FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation.

Abandoned since the museum moved, the rundown building and the grounds around it were occupied in 2006 by some two dozen people from different indigenous groups, as “a symbol of cultural resistance,” says native leader Doitiró Tukano of the Tukano people of the Amazon jungle.

“We are here to show what is different about our culture, which is not a copy, but our very own. Today, according to the Brazilian institute of statistics, there are 305 indigenous groups speaking 186 different languages in Brazil, and that’s what we want to show people. That is our resistance,” he told IPS.

There are an estimated 600,000 members of native communities in this country of 192 million people.

According to unconfirmed reports, the old building is to be replaced by a private sports centre and a parking lot across from the stadium that hosted the 1950 World Cup final, which Uruguay surprisingly won against the home team.

Football is the excuse

Rio de Janeiro state Governor Sergio Cabral said the demolition of the old Museu do Indiao was demanded by FIFA. However, the world football association denied this claim.

Renato Cosentino, spokesman for the People’s Committee of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, said it was just a pretext.

“The excuse of sports is often used to evict people from areas of high real estate value,” he told IPS, referring to the forced displacement of people from poor areas in Rio de Janeiro and 11 other Brazilian cities where the World Cup matches will be held.

About 170,000 people have been evicted around the country, including 30,000 in Rio de Janeiro, which will also organise the 2016 Olympic Games.

Two of the favelas or shantytowns where people have been evicted are next to the Maracaná Stadium, which has become “a symbol of the process of human rights violations that we are experiencing in Brazil,” said the representative of the People’s Committee, which brings together local residents affected by the mega-sports events.

“It’s really sad to see our dream coming to an end,” Tukano said.

“This was a reference point that we wanted to leave to the coming generations,” he added, clarifying that he was not “against the Brazilian people’s love of football…But the World Cup brings us nothing. Of course it will bring benefits to the big companies acting as sponsors.”

The native people living in the ruins and grounds of the old museum are getting ready to resist the demolition, while the ombudsman’s office is preparing to fight the decision in court, on the argument that the building has historical value.

Is nothing sacred?

The squatters have built houses using simple materials like adobe, in an attempt to recreate a typical indigenous village, which they call Maracaná Village. Here they hold native rituals and try to keep their traditions alive in the middle of this bustling city that hems them in.

Among the rusty stairways and tree roots entangled with the crumbling walls, the people who live here organise cultural activities like traditional dances and ceremonies, photo exhibits and even cultural fashion shows displaying native dress.

Before the news of the demolition was confirmed, the people in Maracaná Village were preparing for a traditional coming-of-age ceremony for girls, to be attended by adolescents from several villages in the country’s interior.

“You can see how indigenous people like to eat manioc,” jokes Afonso
Chamakiri of the Apuriná community, another Amazon people, as he and his new family eat lunch: grilled fish served with toasted manioc flour.

Chamakiri has an interesting story. He came to Rio de Janeiro with a dream to become an actor. “My mother came to the city once and went home impressed by ‘a box with people inside who talked’,” he tells IPS. It was the first time she had left her Amazon village, and she had never seen a television.

His dream came true, and he appeared in several films, the latest of which was “Vermelho Brasil”, a co-production of Brazil, France and Canada.

Over the wall built by the company that is remodelling the Maracaná Stadium, some workers are spying on the ceremony held to welcome IPS, in which the native residents living on the grounds of the old museum pray to their ancestors to help the government “see the light” and respect their “sacred space.”

“We have nothing against them,” Chamakiri said about the workers at the stadium. “Many are Indians like us. Others are black, they’re people like us.”

Chamakiri likes to tell a story that few people remember about the origin of the word that was first used to name a local river, then the neighbourhood, and later the stadium.

The Maracaná is a local species of bird that still “comes to eat the fruit of that tree,” he says, pointing to one of the many species of trees still miraculously growing in the middle of this city of around 13 million people.

The bird survived civilisation, but “the old Maracaná indigenous people, who ruled over this territory, are now extinct,” Chamakiri explains. That is why, he says, it is so important to save this cultural centre, “which represents a record of all of the ancestral cultures that emerged here – and were destroyed here.”

“We want this to become a sacred indigenous space,” he adds.

Victorine Fomum, Cameroon’s 2005 African table tennis champion, was given 25 dollars by the government for her achievement. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDÉ, Aug 22 2012 (IPS)

Victorine Fomum is Cameroon’s 2005 African table tennis champion. She often used to “train without rackets, without balls, without appropriate clothing and without good tables.” But despite this, she won gold at the 2005 African Nations Championship. And as a reward for her achievement the government handed her a cheque – for 25 dollars.

“You can imagine what happens at local level. I used to frequently earn 10 dollars as prize money – for winning gold! If I was not also a civil servant, maybe I might have fled too,” she told IPS.

She was referring to the seven Cameroonian athletes who disappeared from the London Olympic Games on Aug. 7. Fomum understands first hand why they did so.

“Training conditions here are horrible,” she said, “The athletes certainly have a right to desire better conditions.”

The athletes – five boxers, a swimmer and a footballer – disappeared from the Olympic village, and later resurfaced requesting asylum in the United Kingdom. They said they did not wish to return to their West African home nation because of the difficult training conditions.

One of the boxers, Thomas Essomba, told the BBC that his country was not able to offer him the opportunities that the UK can. “All we demand is to become champions. England offers the best opportunities for us. The most important issue now is to find sponsors and join boxing clubs,” he said.

Even football, the country’s most popular sport – in 1990 the country became the first African team to reach a football World Cup quarterfinal – has bad infrastructure and suffers from a lack of funds.

Cameroon is currently ranked 59th in the world by the International Football Federation, FIFA – eight spots ahead of South Africa, which has significantly more resources. South Africa will host the 2013 African Nations Cup at a cost of 400 million dollars, 300 million of which will be paid for by the country’s Football Association.

But back in Cameroon, Simon Lyonga, a sports analyst with the state broadcaster Cameroon Radio Television, told IPS that local football players earn a mere 25 dollars a month.

And while other athletes do not earn salaries here, local competitions award low prize money. Gold medallists in Cameroon frequently earn as little as six dollars.

Even in a country where, according to the World Bank, 40 percent of Cameroonians live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, six dollars in prize money is considered very low.

“These are not conditions that would keep any youth around,” Fondo Sikod, a professor of economics at the University of Yaounde II, told IPS.

Fomum knows all about the limited financial reward. She pointed to her display shelf of more than 50 trophies, most of them awards for winning first place.

“On the basis of all this, you may think that I am rich. But I tell you, all the training only ended with the glory of winning. It has very little to do with financial reward, which is quite frustrating.”

The president of the Cameroon Olympic Committee, Kalkaba Malboum, admitted that the country lacked good training facilities.

“We don’t have good training conditions as in other countries. As a result, our athletes will not hesitate to leave for other countries with better training conditions that can improve their performance, meet their dreams of becoming professional and earn more money to improve their living conditions as well as those of their families,” he said on state television on Aug. 10.

One example of a lack of good infrastructure is the Ahmadou Ahidjo Stadium, which was constructed to host the African Nations Cup in 1972. It is still Cameroon’s main stadium, even though it is frequently suspended from international use by FIFA because it has not been maintained.

“The failure to build sport infrastructure in the country is just a result of the lack of political will, and not the absence of financial resources,” Lyonga said.

He said sports, particularly football, brought financial resources into the country. Part of these resources, Lyonga said, is meant to go towards the construction and maintenance of local sports infrastructure.

“In 2010, Cameroon got 800,000 dollars from its participation in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. How the money was used is anyone’s guess,” he said.

Cameroon is expected to register economic growth of 5.2 percent for 2012, up from 4.8 percent in 2011. And Malboum hopes that the government will invest more in the sports sector.

Currently, the Chinese government is co-financing the 661-million-dollar construction costs of four stadia. In addition, there are plans to construct a National Olympics Preparation Centre in Obala, on the outskirts of the country’s capital Yaoundé.

Meanwhile, athletes here hope that the mindset towards sport sponsorship will change. Currently local athletes do not receive sponsorship.

“Each athlete struggles on his or her own,” Fomum said. She added that while Cameroonians loved sports and winning, they balked at the idea of investing in it. So she had to use her own money to pursue her sporting career.

“My dad told me that achievers must always brave the odds.”

The Western Saharwi football team. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
RABUNI CAMP, Western Algeria, Jun 25 2012 (IPS)

The football teams are back in their refugee camps in Algeria, and no, FIFA has taken no note of this tournament. And the television cameras are all at the Euro cup.

These boys played well enough, even if nobody was around to watch. “They would slip in the first matches but this is understandable because they had never ever played football on grass before,” Mohamed Sid Ahmed Bugleida, sports director of the Sahrawi ministry of youth and sports tells IPS. Few know of this ministry in the Western Sahara, let alone of the tournament.

The Western Sahara football team he manages has just returned from Iraqi Kurdistan after taking part in the fourth tournament of the Nouvelle Fédération-Board (NFB). Also known unofficially as the Non-FIFA-Board, this is a football association established in December 2003.

It is made up of teams that represent nations, dependencies, minorities, unrecognised states, stateless peoples, regions and ‘micronations’ not affiliated to FIFA. But it does seek to work with FIFA to acquire membership for its teams eventually.

The politics of dispossession hangs over this Cup. Western Sahara became victim of a decolonisation process interrupted in 1976 when Spain – its former colonial power – left the territory in the hands of Morocco and Mauritania. Morocco now controls almost all the territory, larger than the size of Britain, except for the largely uninhabited and economically useless desert portion.

Today, the vast majority of the Sahrawi population – of between 200,000-250,000 according to UN sources – lives in refugee camps in the Tinduf region in Western Algeria in the Sahara.

“We faced several problems in displaying our flag due to Moroccan pressure on the Kurdish regional government. We were at loggerheads with the local authorities but the Kurdish audience openly expressed their solidarity and warmth,” adds Bugleida from his office in the building of the Ministry of Youth and Sports in Rabuni refugee camp in Western Algeria. At its entrance, a plaque thanks the town of Granadilla (Tenerife, Spain) for its “generous aid”.

In a room nearby, the 20 players from the Saharawi squad in their green tracksuits with the initials SADR (Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic) on their backs, are celebrating with Algerian biscuits and instant coffee after their return from the tournament earlier this month.

Player Cori Maaruf, 26, cannot hide his joy. “I am proud to have written a page in the history of our people,” he tells IPS. “It’s the first time we attended such a tournament but we achieved fourth place among a total of nine teams.

“And take into account that we only trained for five days before the tournament, and always on sand. There are no proper football grounds here in the refugee camps.”

Salah Ahmed, with three goals to his credit, is the top scorer in the local squad. He scored against other non-nations: two against Darfur and one against Occitania, a culturally homogeneous region in southern Europe across France and Italy.

“Whether one day we can play on behalf of a fully recognised sovereign state depends only on god’s will,” says this 24-year-old born in the Dajla refugee camp 170 kilometres southeast of Rabuni. Until then, he says he will carry the Saharawi national flag with pride wherever he goes.

“Much more important than any sport result is to show the world that we exist, that there is nation called Western Sahara that struggles to survive after decades of unfair and brutal occupation,” says Said Saleh, a 21-year-old footballer after his second trip outside the refugee camps.

The first, he says, was to Spain after he was invited by a family in Madrid. After the abduction of three aid workers – two Spaniards and one Italian – in the Western Sahara seven months ago, and the financial crisis in the Eurozone, the number of summer visits to Spain have declined, together with international aid to the refugees.

These young players have only recently started to represent their people in football stadiums. But the Polisario Front, outlawed in the Morocco-controlled part of Western Sahara, is recognised by the UN as the legitimate representative of the Western Sahrawis since 1979. Polisario officials expressed concern to IPS over diminishing aid over in the last few months.

Mohamed Molud, minister of youth and sports, stresses the strong encouragement the squad brings to the young in a difficult environment. “It’s far from easy to generate any enthusiasm towards sports in this environment and with a total lack of resources.”

Renting a proper football ground from the Algerian government, and organising matches against local teams, or even neighbouring countries such as Mauritania, are some of the proposals being considered.

For the time being, both staff and players look forward to the next NFB tournament in 2014. There were no surprises in the 2012 tournament: the cup stayed in Kurdistan – four of their players also play for the Iraqi national team.

(END)