Integrating Sport Into Youth Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Strategies

Invites Member States, entities of the United Nations system, the International Olympic Committee, the International Paralympic Committee and other stakeholders, including sports-related organizations, federations and associations, athletes, the media, civil society, academia and the private sector, to promote greater awareness and action to reduce crime so as to contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development¹⁶ through sports-based initiatives, taking into account the importance of youth crime prevention and criminal justice and the risks to youth posed by corruption and crime in sport, and to use sport as a tool to promote peace, justice and dialogue during and beyond the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games;

Invites the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to launch a global awareness-raising and fundraising campaign during the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games and the 2022 World Cup competition to promote sport and sports-based learning as part of strategies aimed at addressing the risk factors of youth crime and drug abuse and to provide assistance to requesting Member States in this area, and invites the national organizing committees, the International Olympic Committee and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association to work in close cooperation with the Office in this regard;

Encourages Member States to advance the integration of sport into cross-cutting crime prevention and criminal justice strategies, policies and programmes, where appropriate and consistent with domestic law, on the basis of reliable standards, indicators and benchmarks, and to ensure the monitoring and evaluation of such strategies, policies and programmes;

Also encourages Member States to emphasize and advance the use of sport as a vehicle to promote crime prevention and criminal justice and the rule of law, to realize gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, to ensure the participation of everyone without discrimination of any kind and to promote tolerance, mutual understanding and respect, which in turn reinforce peaceful and inclusive societies;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in line with its mandate and in close coordination with Member States, as well as in cooperation with relevant international organizations and partners, to continue identifying and disseminating information and good practices on the use of sport and sports-based learning in connection with crime and violence prevention, including the prevention of violence against women and children, as well as in the context of the social reintegration of offenders, and to provide advice and support to policymakers and practitioners;

Calls upon Member States to strengthen community-based support measures for youth to address risk factors of crime and violence, and encourages Member States to provide sport and recreational facilities and programmes in this regard;

Encourages Member States, in cooperation with relevant stakeholders, to use sports-based activities more widely to promote primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of youth crime and the social reintegration of young offenders, as well as to prevent recidivism by them, and, in this regard, to promote and facilitate effective research, monitoring and evaluation of relevant initiatives, including gang-related initiatives, to assess their impact;

Invites Member States to consider the development of clear policy frameworks within which sports-based initiatives can operate to effect positive change in the fields of crime prevention and criminal justice;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to convene an expert group meeting, in close coordination with Member States and in collaboration with all relevant United Nations entities, in particular the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the Secretariat, the institutes of the United Nations crime prevention and criminal justice programme network and sports organizations such as the International Olympic Committee and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, to examine effective ways and means of integrating sport into youth crime prevention and criminal justice, building upon its existing programmes and taking into account the Sustainable Development Goals and other relevant United Nations action plans, standards and norms, with a view to analysing and compiling a set of best practices that cater to various stakeholders and enhance system-wide coordination, and to present a report to the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice for consideration at its twenty-ninth session, as well as to the Fourteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice for its information, and in this connection welcomes the offer of the Government of Thailand to act as host for that expert group meeting in 2019;

Invites the institutes of the United Nations crime prevention and criminal justice programme network to consider including in their work programmes the issue of integrating sport into youth crime prevention and criminal justice, noting the efforts of Member States to achieve the relevant Sustainable Development Goals;

Requests the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to provide information to the Secretary-General on the implementation of the present resolution as a possible contribution to his report to the General Assembly at its seventy-fifth session on the implementation of resolution 73/24 of 3 December 2018 on sport as an enabler of sustainable development;

Invites Member States and other donors to provide extrabudgetary resources for these purposes in accordance with the rules and procedures of the United Nations.