A/HRC/40/72 participate at a high level. The Olympic Movement could promote unity of youth worldwide, and of all humanity. Mr. Keino acknowledged the roles of human rights mechanisms, sports governing bodies, athletes, coaches, parents and civil society. His Kip Keino children’s home worked for the preservation of the environment and to promote access to food, water, shelter and education for those in most need and in least developed regions. 14. Emma Terho, a member of the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission, argued that sport contributed to girls’ self-confidence and integration in groups. Sport presented a common universal language that gave hope, opportunities and life skills to the most vulnerable. The threshold to enter sports was high for those who could most benefit from it. Coordination and cooperation between organizations, governments, sports clubs and communities should ensure that everyone had the right to participate. The International Olympic Committee championed that goal, for example by promoting the Refugee Olympic Team and taking seriously the commitments in the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development to gender equality. Women had comprised only 4.3 per cent of participants in 1924, but would be 48 per cent in the 2020 Olympic Games. The 2018 Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games would have gender parity. Increasing the number of women’s teams in collective sports, such as hockey, opened up opportunities to many other women and girls to develop and improve their self-esteem. 15. According to the representative of World Indigenous Nations Sports International, Willie Littlechild, the World Indigenous Games, celebrated in Brazil and Canada in 2015 and 2017 respectively, affirmed indigenous peoples’ self-determination through sport and culture. Since 1977, Mr. Littlechild had advocated an indigenous perspective to sports and the Olympic ideal. Direct and meaningful participation was crucial to indigenous peoples in sports, but often denied. Traditional teachings and games promoted respect for the physical, mental, cultural and spiritual elements of life. The five rings of the Olympic symbol represented the latter element. Mr. Littlechild recommended that sporting events should include indigenous participation and traditional protocol. He called for the implementation of indigenous peoples’ right to cultural manifestations, including sports and traditional games, and called on UNESCO to update its charter for traditional games and sports with accurate references to indigenous peoples. Sport had the power to heal and to promote peace and reconciliation. 16. Juan Pablo Salazar, a member of the International Paralympic Committee, recalled that sport was an instrument for change. The impact on the civil rights movement of Smith and Carlos’s 1968 podium salute provided an example. Mr. Salazar proposed a three-step agenda on the human rights impact of sport. First, align the political will of stakeholders. Second, collect data on correlations between sports and human rights. Third, promote change through action plans, budgets, regulations and investments. Bridging the gap between the human rights of persons with disabilities and the Paralympic movement was a major challenge. Setting up networks among athletes and Sustainable Development Goals and human rights activists was an important first step. Globally, UNESCO and the Commonwealth Secretariat had led similar efforts. Mr. Salazar emphasized the importance of networks between activists for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Paralympic athletes. 17. During the interactive dialogue, representatives of Cuba, Association Le Pont, the Indigenous Peoples and Nations Coalition, the International Paralympic Committee, the Intertribal Committee, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and a former Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to nondiscrimination in this context, took the floor. Participants condemned racist expressions in sport, and structural injustices against indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, women, children and local populations. They supported a human rights-centred perspective that promoted dialogue and peace. Panellists were questioned on: motivations for athletes to become activists, ways to ensure equal participation in games and inclusion in unequal societies, the promotion of reconciliation through sports after historical injustices, ways to reconcile the rights of athletes and of local populations, and how to commit sports to the rights of the child and to self-determination of indigenous peoples. 6