International meeting in Vienna for Sentry Sport project

The fourth international meeting of Sentry Sport project was held in Vienna on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 December, organised by the Austrian association VIDC, partner of the project, with whom UISP has been cooperating for over 20 years on international projects on sport against racism. 

UISP was represented by Daniela Conti, head of UISP cooperation and intercultural policies; Marta Giammaria, head of the National UISP Project Office and Marco Proto, UISP operator; Davide Valeri, sociologist was also present. The meeting was aimed at taking stock of the state of the art of the project after two years of joint work and to plan the next six months of work. 

Many actions have been carried out: the creation of a manifesto with the presentation of the project; the toolkit that illustrates the working methodology; a practical addendum on the experimentation that each association is carrying out in its own territory; a set of online training materials available to everyone on the international project website. Experimental work is currently going on in Italy, Spain, France, Greece and Austria to test the methodology created for Sentry Sport on monitoring and understanding the discriminatory phenomenon in sport, to verify how local networks can collect this type of information, through a work of sensitisation on the territory and among sportspeople. 

From the comparison between the partners it emerged that throughout Europe there is great difficulty in detecting any form of discrimination; there is an underestimation of the phenomenon, especially as regards the less clear episodes (such as violence on the pitch or in the stands, phenomena of evidently racist, sexist or homophobic verbal attacks). Furthermore, it is often difficult to get victims to report because they feel ashamed or guilty, and because they themselves often underestimate the problem. 

The experimental work will end in February 2023; from March the consortium of partners will work on the creation of the latest materials: a collection of "lessons learned" and "advice" that will form a further addendum to the methodological guide already created and a series of policy recommendations to be delivered to sports associations, local political institutions and the European Union. The International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA) is also producing a series of short videos that will serve for the dissemination work that each partner will have to do to promote the materials created, both using their own social media and organising sporting events in the months between February and May 2023. 

The next meeting will take place in Madrid in February and will be organised by Red Deporte y Cooperacion. Instead, it will be up to EFUS-European Forum for Urban Security to organise the final meeting, with the presentation of the entire work process, in the month of June in France.

This international path is intertwined with the Observatory against discrimination in sport, whose report was recently presented, and with the Erasmus+ project entitled Monitora, which will start on 1 January 2023 and of which UISP is a partner. The meeting in Vienna also represented an opportunity to participate in the international festival on human rights - This Human World where films and documentaries are presented on this issue made all over the world and in every sphere of life. 

In fact, on Thursday 8th in the evening, the film "Lotus Sport Club" was screened, which tells the story of a team made up of queer people in Cambodia. At the end, a debate moderated by Kurt Wacther of VIDC was started, attended by Daniela Conti and Oliver Egger, of Fussball für Alle, an association that works in particular with LGBTQ+ communities. The debate focused in particular on the need to create an inclusive and safe environment for all people with different sexual orientations or identities.  On this occasion Daniela Conti presented the Alias membership promoted by UISP, for access to sports activities with one's chosen gender identity regardless of that indicated on the official documents.