Sport and Peace – Could this be the theme at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Geneva?

In April 2008, an initial committee (Torriani, Jean-Pierre Jobin, Jean-Loup Chappelet among many others) formed 6 work groups, each one on a potential theme: Youth, Solidarity, Meeting, Culture, Technology and Equilibrium. The chosen approach was a team initiative to study the potential for Geneva hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Grains of Peace took part in the Workgroup "Geneva 2018, the Games for meeting one another", chaired by Mr. Raymond Loretan.

Proposals put forward

1. Geneva, city of peace

This group put forward their key proposal: "Geneva 2018 : The Olympic Games of Peace", with two main concepts:
    - The “Spirit of Geneva” and the promotion of international agreement.
    - The IOC and the promotion of peace: symbolic actions and real potential.
The group has proposed associating Geneva with peace, city of the defence of Human Rights and of the promotion of collaboration among people – and thus similarly associating Olympicism with pacifism. Holding the 2018 Olympic Games of peace in Geneva would be a way to single out this city’s candidacy. Geneva is in fact one of the only cities in the world to legitimately merit this designation and certainly the only one to be able to use this slogan within the scope of candidacy for the Olympic Games.

2. IOC, potential role-player in peace

The group underlined that for 20 years the IOC has undertaken the promotion of peace through sport, exceeding the strict framework of sport to be a partner in diplomatic ground. Their close collaboration with the United Nations has led to a series of measures that on some occasions were successful in the field, however being in most cases only symbolic with few concrete results with regards to conflict resolution.

It is considered that today there is a real potential for a city candidate, such as Geneva, to take advantage of highlighting peace with regards to the Olympics, going even further in their steps undertaken to achieve this.

3. Wide declension of the theme “Meeting”

The theme of meeting was declined on three levels:
1) International meeting : the meeting of Geneva with the world
2) National meeting : the meeting of Geneva with Switzerland
3) Local meeting: the meeting of Geneva with its people and visitors.

Grains of Peace position

Throughout the sessions, Grains of Peace particularly defended the following three points:
- To promote Olympic sport with its original peace values and highlight these
- To encourage meeting in friendships and respect between players and spectators coming from different countries and cultures
- To ensure that the spirit of the games would be there without a disproportionate budget demonstrating that the Olympics can be even better with less means.

Conclusions:
The City and the Canton have decided not to support the candidacy at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.