Saleh Salem Al Eida, Special Advisory, Strategy and Partnership Development, ICSS, and Massimiliano Montanari, CEO, ICSS during a press conference in Doha yesterday.
The International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS) will debate wide-ranging issues including raging topic of racism in sports during this week’s virtual conference, the body’s top official said yesterday.
Massimiliano Montanari, CEO of ICSS, said the Dec 1-4 conference will also discuss ways and means to tackle the challenges facing the world of sports in COVID-19 times following lengthy deliberations with opinion-makers and experts.
“It will be a four-day virtual event. In the previous editions, we have discussed a range of topics. This year, we will talk of challenges facing our society as we cope with COVID-19. One of our key topics will include the issue of racism in our society and in international sport,” Montanari said yesterday. “Securing Sport will go beyond the virtual model of a conference as it will be an opportunity to bring our partners to receive their guidance and inputs on the objectives that the ICSS should achieve in 2021. At the same time, it will be an opportunity to inform policy makers and decision-makers around the world about the challenges that we are facing. We shall also discuss and share the ideas and the future trends that we will have to deal with,” Montanari said.
Saleh Salem Al Eida, Special Advisory, Strategy and Partnership Development, ICSS, said yesterday: “The Securing Sport 2022 is on course to be an exceptional edition of the ICSS-hosted conference. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the new challenges the pandemic has instigated with respect to the safety, security and integrity of sport will be addressed under the conference theme ‘Building Resilience in an Ever-Changing World, given that the current circumstances have added yet another layer of complexity to the threats the world of sport faces.”
Montanari said top experts will feature in the four-day virtual conference.
“The level of participation (of experts) is very high. We will have leaders from the world of sports, from the society and academia. All of them will be connected to share their ideas and identify solutions and most importantly we will discuss how we should collectively implement those ideas in 2021. We need to start walking in 2021 so when we meet in December 2021, we could reflect what we have achieved,” Montanari said at a press conference called to discuss the Dec 1-4 conference.
“We believe that this an important time since Feb and March when Covid-19 really hit us. The world of sport has been very concerned how to bring back people into the stadiums. A lot of focus - in assistance with WHO - has taken place on how to develop tools that would facilitate the start of sports.
“This time our conversations have been broader on how to feel the changes in the long term. Society is changing. The world economy is changing. Many things are changing and we cannot see the future of sports short-term. We can’t be just thinking whether we are going to play or not play. We need to talk about many other related issues. The title of the conference is essential. It deals with issues which - if not addressed timely - might have consequences on the world economy or on our societies,” Montanari said.“The conference is in line with previous editions where we talked about ideas to influence the policy-makers. Our objectives is to gather these inputs (from the experts) and orient them to the work of our organization over the course of the next 12 months and then to create a mechanism that talks about the results achieved.
“During the four days, we will address the protection of youth in sports and the use of technology for the protection of sport. All these pilot discussions along with working groups will define a roadmap for correction. For us this is the new main element in our conference.
“Also, we will try to look at the protection of sport through a holistic approach. If you remember, many years ago when we were talking about sports security in the 80s and the 90s, our main concern was the issue of hooliganism. Then after September 2001, we started to focus on protecting sports from terrorism. Nowadays the main concern is not just about individuals that cause unrest, but now we look at systemic issues and pandemic threats like - climate change and immigration,” he said.
