This week the Sports Think Tank attended the fifth annual 'Peace and Sport' (http://www.peace-sport.org/) Forum in Monaco. Led and founded by President and former world pentathlon champion, Joel Bouzou, the organisation has gone from strength to strength since its inception in 2007 under the vision of, 'Building sustainable peace through sport. Together.'

But what does sport really have to do with building peace? George Orwell is quoted in 1945 as saying, 'Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.' Indeed, I would be lying if I said I cannot recall the dozens of football matches I have attended witnessing pure contempt and factious division between players and fans alike. There is also an argument that sport (and other pursuits like music for example) should simply not mix with politics, an argument used by the rebel English tour to South Africa during the apartheid regime in 1990.

At its heart, sport is about competition. I can't imagine going to a football match or watching a tennis tournament without it. Imagine the scene a few weeks ago if after their cruel defeat to France, the thousands of fans watching at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff had simply thought, 'Oh well, shame about that, but wasn't it entertaining??' Bearing this in mind, how can a whole conference, let alone an international movement be dedicated to bringing about Peace through Sport?

In the many years that I have been playing sport, I can attest to the fact that sport can bring about something more than just competition. Although Orwell makes a interesting point, I think he is missing something; he is missing the purpose of why we play in the first place. In sport, we experience a real sense of joy in both playing and supporting. It is that joy, which although it arises from the fun of competition, can eventually bring about a shared unity. In his address at the opening ceremony here in Monaco, Dr Pal Schmitt, President of the Republic of Hungary claimed that 'just as health is not simply the absence of illness, peace is not simply the absence of war'. To create peace, those in conflict must somehow find a sense of shared joy and this can be found in sport. I have often said that if I have nothing in common with someone, no shared understanding of culture, class background or other interests in common; if we both love sport we can talk for hours and be deeply untied in the enjoyment of this shared understanding, even if we support different teams or come from different nations. This shared joy, can of course, be found in other pursuits, such as music and literature; however, the point is that in often impoverished countries, there are few pursuits that are as easily accessible as sport for this purpose.

Sport also has the potential to speak across racial, ethnic, political and religious divides; I have been in many different part of the world and found this to hold unequivocally true. As one African delegate at the Forum told me, 'Sport does not have a single language, and it does not have a father and a mother. It allows everyone to participate on equal terms no matter where you are from.' As a result, programmes such as martial arts for peace in Israel/Palestine, 'Little Sports' working with 40,000 children each year in Kenya, and former Marathon world record holder Tegla Loroupe working with Kenyan warlords to facilitate discussion and handover of weapons, have been a great success, prompting sessions dedicated to sharing the best ideas and practices as well as thinking about how to collaborate better for the ultimate goal of world peace.

It would be wrong to suggest anyone at this Forum thought sport alone can produce a peaceful outcome to all violence in the world today. It would also probably be wrong to suggest that sport should be the main method in seeking this goal. However, it would be almost universally accepted that sport is and should be utilised as a powerful tool and catalyst for building sustainable peace around the world. This also has wider implications for the international development movement, as it is very hard to work for development where there is not peace, an insight shared by King Letsie III of Lesotho. Sport can contribute to the building of peace and therefore pave the way (and of course also be a part of) the development of a country, bringing people out of poverty.

So ultimately, like many things in life, sport can be used for good such as building peace, but of course it can also be abused and used to create division. I believe I have witnessed a very special example here in Monaco of the former.