"Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination." Nelson Mandela, 2000
Florence Engleback and Callum Gordon on why the pitch, the ring and the track may be doing more for social cohesion than any policy paper, and what it takes to make that goodwill last.
Sport is far more than a training ground for physical prowess: it builds communication, teamwork and leadership, and its effects can be felt long after the final whistle has blown. Built around a common goal and shared experience, sport can unite people across gender, ethnicity, social background and political identity. Whether amateur or professional, informal or organised, it can inspire unity and collaboration that can contribute to lasting, far-reaching peace and social cohesion.
The idea that peace and cohesion can grow out of ordinary, everyday interactions can be traced back to the psychologist Gordon Allport, whose 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice argued that, under the right conditions, contact between different social groups can reduce bias and improve relations between them. This has become known as contact hypothesis, and Allport set out four conditions necessary for it to work. The groups involved must have equal status. They must share a common goal. Their interaction must be based on cooperation rather than competition. And it needs some form of official backing, to establish a safe social norm of equality.
Team sport is well placed to meet these conditions. By bringing people together on a level playing field, in pursuit of a shared goal, it creates space for relationships to form across political, ethnic and religious lines, offering not just participation but an opportunity for a genuine connection. Professor Roger Mac Ginty, of Durham University's School of Government and International Affairs, writes about peace as something built through the ordinary actions of ordinary people. Sport, through its interactions, gives people a way to navigate their similarities and differences peacefully, making it a powerful vehicle for everyday peacebuilding. From a passing conversation between teammates to a hard-fought championship match, sport can build a shared sense of understanding, purpose and belonging, for competitors and spectators alike.
The Commonwealth Games
It has been a momentous year for sport. After the Winter Olympics and Paralympics and the FIFA World Cup, 2026 saw the Commonwealth Games return to Glasgow. When the Australian state of Victoria withdrew from hosting, Scotland's biggest city took up the baton, organising a scaled-down Games that still brought together 3,000 athletes from 74 nations and territories who competed in ten sports and six fully integrated para-sports across the city. Glasgow met the occasion with energy and spirit, celebrating a Commonwealth that is unified in its diversity.
To mark the occasion, the British Council's Non-Formal Education team brought together sports practitioners, representatives from academia, and public sector leaders from across the Commonwealth to discuss how sport can bridge divides, and how policy and practice might combine to inspire lasting change.
Among those taking part were was Jules Murhula, Director of Soccer Without Borders in Uganda, who spoke on the lived experience for refugees in contexts affected by conflict and displacement, and highlighted the importance of sport as a means of setting aside divisions and trauma to build friendships and community. Stephanie Nicolas, founder of United Sport Cyprus, brought lessons learned from a long-standing divided society where basketball has given young people the opportunity to overcome inherited divisions. Amy Stewart, Deputy Director of Monkstown Boxing Club in Northern Ireland, emphasised the roles that coaches have as trusted adults in understanding the individual young person to enable positive pathways. Gayle McPherson, Director of the Centre for Culture, Sport and Events at the University of the West of Scotland, spoke about the part that major sporting events can bring in intentionally designing social outcomes into their legacy, as well as the need to confront structural barriers directly. And Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, the multi-Paralympic medallist who chairs Sport Wales and sits in the House of Lords, shared reflections on progress in disability inclusion during her own sporting career, adding that change must be collaborative with policymaking across sectors to facilitate societal change.
The grassroots practitioners, alongside leaders and policymakers from Scotland and Wales, spoke frankly about what it takes to deliver sports programmes in divided communities, the importance of evidence-based decision-making, and how impact can be sustained once the competition itself has ended. Three lessons stood out:
• Impact does not happen by chance. It requires deliberate programme design, patient trust-building with communities and sustained funding, with trauma-informed, community-rooted practice at the heart of it all.
• Sport alone cannot fix structural inequality, poverty or violence. It needs to be paired with reform across housing, education, health and beyond.
• Major events like the Commonwealth Games must plan for legacy from the outset, with funding and cross-sector partnerships in place, if their social value is to outlast the closing ceremony.
Looking ahead
Taken together, these insights point to a clear conclusion: sport does not automatically produce peace or cohesion, but it can create the conditions for them. What determines whether sport unifies or divides is not the act of playing itself, but the quality and structure of the interaction it creates. Achieving the kind of high-quality, impactful contact that Gordon Allport described takes context, sensitivity and intent. The true impact of events like the Commonwealth Games reaches far beyond ten days of competition; it lies in the carefully planned, purposefully coordinated legacies that can build lasting social cohesion within, and between, communities.