ATHENS: If the rules of ancient Greece were observed today, drone and missile fire over Ukraine would stop on Friday as guns fall silent in the Olympic tradition.<\/p>\n
The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics begin in one week, and the United Nations and organizers are calling for a 7-week pause of all wars worldwide \u2014 as they do every time the Olympics take place.<\/p>\n
It serves to set a moral baseline at a time when some researchers say there are more armed conflicts than ever before and Earth is at its closest to destruction.<\/p>\n
An ancient pause, a modern plea<\/p>\n
In ancient Greece, a truce was respected by warring city-states, allowing athletes and spectators to travel safely to Ancient Olympia for competitions and ceremonies of supreme athletic and spiritual significance.<\/p>\n
The Olympics were revived in their modern form in 1896. The truce\u2019s resurgence followed nearly a century later, in 1994, as war raged through the former Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n
The proposed timeout starts one week before the Winter Games open on Feb. 6 and runs until one week after the March 15 Paralympics\u2019 close. It is backed by a UN General Assembly resolution.<\/p>\n
If history is any indication, no sudden worldwide peace is imminent: The truce has a dismal 0-17 record, having failed to halt a single war.<\/p>\n
Sarajevo, Korea and the power of sport<\/p>\n
The first modern Olympic truce, during the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, did produce a one-day pause in the siege of Sarajevo, allowing aid convoys to deliver food and medicine to the Bosnian capital\u2019s desperate residents. In Sydney six years later, North and South Korea marched together at the opening ceremony.<\/p>\n
Governments around the world overwhelmingly agree that sport can unite and heal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWherever possible, we should strive toward creating even a small space for peace,\u201d Constantinos Filis, director of the International Olympic Truce Center, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Ceasefire initiatives still count in an era of global disorder and political polarization, as unilateral aggression increasingly threatens international cooperation, argues Filis, who is also director of the Institute of Global Affairs in Athens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis may not always be achievable in practice,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the message reaches every corner of the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arithmetic of a world\u2019s wars<\/p>\n
Outside the Swedish capital of Stockholm, a group of academics has tracked global war trends for more than 80 years. It reported that 2024 had the highest number of active armed conflicts in a single year: 61.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen quite a strong increase in the number of conflicts over the past five or six years,\u201d said Shawn Davies, a senior analyst at Uppsala University\u2019s Department of Peace and Conflict Research. And its upcoming annual report will show 2025 had even more conflicts than the prior year, he added.<\/p>\n
As the US steps back from multilateralism, Davies said, countries are becoming more likely to test their neighbors, creating a more volatile, fragmented security landscape.<\/p>\n
Some major conflicts remain largely unnoticed in the West, he said, pointing to western Africa, where Al-Qaeda and Daesh group affiliates continue to spread across borders.<\/p>\n
And the \u201cDoomsday Clock\u201d, a symbolic gauge of Earth\u2019s existential peril, edged closer to midnight this week, according to an announcement from members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.<\/p>\n
Hope versus broken promises<\/p>\n
UN truce resolutions typically pass with broad majorities. Yet signatories repeatedly break their own pledge. Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 infamously began during a truce period.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the Olympics are an excellent moment to symbolize peace, to symbolize respect for international law, and to symbolize international cooperation,\u201d UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres told reporters Thursday.<\/p>\n
Kirsty Coventry, the multi-Olympic swimming champion who last year became the first woman to lead the International Olympic Committee, addressed the General Assembly at the latest vote in November.<\/p>\n
Watching peaceful competition, she said, inspired her to begin her gold-medal journey as a young girl in Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven in these dark times of division, it is possible to celebrate our shared humanity and inspire hope for a better future,\u201d Coventry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSport \u2014 and the Olympic Games in particular \u2014 can offer a rare space where people meet not as adversaries, but as fellow human beings,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is why the Olympic Truce is so important.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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