SPORT 1913 - 2013

als. Paramount among those ideals is the quest for global peace. The Olympic Truce Initiative is a highly commendable effort to remind us of that objective behind the Olympic Games and to give concrete substance to the ideal of peace….” (Mandela 2002). However, with the upcoming Olympic Games in London the question comes up, have we been living up to this Olympic ideal? How

In late 2011, there were 24 states directly affected by on-going wars (32 wars in total, up from 27 at the end of 2002). Of these 24 states, more than half (13) are affected by protracted wars, that is, armed conflicts persisting for more than ten years. These protracted societal conflicts include Afghanistan (33 years), Co- lombia (36 years), D.R. of Congo (19 years), India (59), Iraq (31), Israel (46), Myanmar (63), Nigeria (14), Pakistan (14), Philippines (39), Somalia (23), Sudan (28), and Turkey (27); Sri Lanka ended its protracted war with ethnic- Tamil separatists in 2009. The remaining pro- tracted wars continue to defy concerted ef- forts to gain settlement or resolution. On average, during the contemporary pe- riod, interstate wars lasted about three years; civil wars lasted just over five years; and eth- nic wars lasted nearly ten years. http://www. systemicpeace.org/CTfig06.htm Also on the African continent violent conflicts have been widespread, affecting all sub-regions of the continent. There have been civil wars in Mozambique, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, in West Africa, in Liberia, Si- erra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Côte d’Ivoire, Sen- egal, in the Eastern part Uganda and Somalia and at the horn of Africa Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Sudan have been affected by civil war. In 2009 Sub-Saharan Africa had eighty- five conflicts altogether, thirty of which were classified as crises and nine as highly violent, compared to seventy-nine conflicts in 2008, out of which two ended, thirty-one were clas- sified as crises and twelve as highly violent

have we been doing in the past and the recent present with regard to conflict and diversity?

Global Status of Conflict and Diversity Global trends in armed conflict events out- lined in Figure 1 show that from 1946 – 2011 the downward global trend in armed conflicts has levelled off in the early years of the 21 st century.

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Figure 1: Annual number of on-going armed conflicts in the global system