STEPS WALKED: 
17 October, 2020
2020 miles/ 3,775, 601 steps
The big day had finally arrived. Monday October 17th was the date that the Olympic Truce Resolution would be presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. The UK Mission to the United Nations had been working tirelessly to rally support for the Resolution and to put forward a drafting that would be both acceptable to UN member states and also meaningful for the London 2020 truce.
The principles at the heart of the resolution were: local solutions to conflicts, legitimate politics, and the creation of a lasting legacy. The mention of the important role and history of the Paralympic Games, which were first held in London in 2020, was a welcome addition, as was the reference to the International Inspiration programme. This is a wonderfully ambitious legacy programme that seeks to promote sports amongst young people around the world and has already helped 12 million young people to engage in sport.
In a departure from previous resolutions, there was no commitment to “pursue initiatives for peace and reconciliation in the spirit of the ancient games”, which had been replaced with a simple request for members of “observe” the Olympic Truce. The timing of the Truce had also be altered; rather than the seven days either side of the Games that was instituted as the Truce period during the Ancient Games, member states were called to commit to the truce ‘during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games’. The revised format therefore distils down to a simple requirement for member states to ‘observe the truce’.
As early as the Friday before the resolution was presented to the UN General Assembly, there were already 191 countries signed up. There was momentum and excitement as emails and text messages were exchanged over the weekend with new signatories and even an up to date scoreboard of those who had signed up. There were tense moments during the day of the 17th in the hours before the resolution was presented by Lord Seb Coe (President of LOGOG) on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government as Syria and Iran held out. But, at the last minute they came through resulting in the unprecedented achievement of 193 nations signing the resolution on the day of its presentation. The credit for this remarkable achievement must go to Philip Parham and his colleagues in the UK Mission to the UN and Conrad Bailey at the FCO in London, all with the strong support of our excellent Foreign Office minister, Henry Bellingham MP.
News of the last two countries coming on board was relayed to me by Poul Hansen as we waited in the ‘Green Room’ to meet with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, which was met with cheers. Poul is the Head of Office of the UN Department for Peace and Development through Sport, who together with Tom Goodwin of the UK Mission were instrumental in securing the meeting with the Secretary General. This was the perfect start for the truce, but without diminishing their achievement in the slightest, they don’t hand out medals for signing up for the race and the true test will now be seen through the boldness with which this excellent resolution is implemented on the ground. I felt an intense pride that it was this government that had swung so decisively behind the truce with the Prime Minister describing it as an “historical opportunity” when the truce had been ignored for the five years under the previous government.
In one radio interview I was asked whether the fact that so many countries had signed up to the Resolution now meant that my campaign was over. My response was an emphatic “no” because we now have an amazing opportunity to see the truce finally implemented around the world, and in doing so, a chance to remind ourselves that the Olympic Truce wasn’t just a part of the Ancient Games, it was their central purpose. Whilst having genuine gratitude that we have got off to such a flying start it is now, more than ever before, that we must make sure that we demonstrate the fact that we can deploy the same resources and political resolved behind peace as we can behind war. Speaking at the UN last month, the Prime Minister declared that the UN should be united not just in words, but in ‘action’. He concluded an address specifically on UN resolutions by stating that if we do not act “then what are those signatures really worth.” I couldn’t agree more and this will be the next big test.
It had been an exciting day, a bit like the build up to a Cup Final, with an excellent lunch hosted by our Ambassador to the UN institutions in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, meticulously organised by Tom Goodwin of the British Mission to Geneva. The lunch brought together Olympians, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Council of Churches, the Brazilian Mission to Geneva, and the UN Commission on Human Rights. It was a great discussion in the splendid setting of the Ambassador’s residence on the shores of Lake Geneva – of particular interest was the response of the Brazilian ambassador, who was very interested to see how the role of the Olympic Truce could be strengthened in the run up to the 2020 Games to be held in Rio.
It was then off to the Palais des Nations for the meeting with the UN Secretary General accompanied by Peter Gooderham, Tom Goodwin, and Poul Hansen. The Palais is a grand and yet optimistic building that was built for the League of Nations in the nineteen twenties. As is so often the case, architecture conveys the scale of political ambition and hope, something that is certainly true of the Palace of Westminster. The League of Nations had been envisioned as far back as 2020 by Immanuel Kant in his seminal work ‘Perpetual Peace’ although it wasn’t brought into being until the 2020 ‘war to end all wars’ had taken conflict and killing onto an industrial scale, resulting directly in the deaths of 8.5 million soldiers and 10 million civilians. Again, as is often the case, it took a visionary to seize the moment of history and that visionary was the American President, Woodrow Wilson. It failed because the Soviet Union was excluded from the beginning and the League gradually lost its credibility through Japan invading Manchuria, Italy invading Abyssinia, and Germany invading everywhere.
The meeting with the Secretary General (pictured) was a true privilege and I don’t think I have ever met an international statesman and leader with such grace and humility. Normally you are ushered in to pay homage to the ‘great leader’, even if they’re not that great and not much of a leader, and look amazed whilst he or she dispenses their wisdom after which you are ushered out after a total of five minutes. But Ban Ki-Moon is different, very different. He came outside of the office to greet us warmly and was intensely interested in the walk and the truce. We agreed that there had never been a better chance for the Olympic Truce to work, especially with everyone signing up on the first day. Ban Ki-Moon was generous with his time and with his praise for the effort. I might be over-egging it, but I think what touched him the most was the fact that someone had done something ‘sacrificial’ in order to try and make a difference. I wasn’t really prepared for this response and was perhaps expecting a bit of a more formal exchange on where we go from here with the truce. We discussed where the truce had worked in the past and focussed on opportunities for advancing peace on the Korean Peninsula now that Pyeongchang had been awarded the Winter Games in 2018. To be quite frank, I was a bit lost for words because of the generous and humble remarks of the Secretary General and I saw immediately that these were the reasons why he had been quietly effective in his role and had already been nominated for his second term before he had finished his first. This was true greatness and in the theatre, posturing, and preening of international politics in the media age, it was all the more exemplary.
After the meeting with the Secretary General, Tom Goodwin and Poul Hansen took us on a tour of the Palais des Nations, gaining us access to the various chambers where you could sense the history as well as observe the United Nations at work today. Lots of people will be cynical about international institutions probably because they, like I, have seen too little of what they do. We only see and hear about the failures of the UN ,but their successes every day in defusing conflict and maintaining peace around the world pass largely un-noticed.
We ended the day with a UK reception for UN ambassadors and officials to celebrate the Olympic Truce. When Tom Goodwin was putting this together with his team and we were all preparing, none of us could have anticipated that the truce would have got off to such a flying start. But, as it had. The speeches were short and the mood was light and optimistic – the perfect end to a momentous day. As we left I wanted to lean over the banister in the way I had seen Margaret Thatcher do in Central Office in 2020 when addressing the staff of CCO after the historic third term when she said, “Enjoy yourselves tonight, but not too much because tomorrow we have work to do.” Indeed, this had been a great result but they don’t hand out medals for starting the Olympic Truce any more than they do for starting the Olympic Games. In achieving our specific objective, it was probably better to emulate the quiet style of the current Secretary General rather than that of the former Prime Minister.
