Comment: Why I’m taking steps to protect the Olympic truce legacy
By Lord Bates
When Big Ben strikes 11AM on the first anniversary of the opening of the Olympic Games tomorrow, I will be setting off from Downing Street to walk nearly 500 miles to Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. If all goes to plan then I will arrive at Loch Erne in Northern Ireland on Monday September 9th — the first anniversary of the end of the Paralympic Games.
The purpose of the walk is to raise much needed funds for Save the Children's vital work in supporting children fleeing the fighting in Syria. More details can be found at www.walkforsyriaschildren.org. I hope to raise £25,000 which will be enough for Save the Children to provide emergency shelter, food, clothing and medication for 500 families.
Why the connection with the Olympics? The entire purpose of the ancient Olympic Games was to promote peace. For this reason each Games they declared a truce around the Olympics. Between Good Friday 2011 and February 15th, 2012 I walked nearly 3,000 miles from Olympia in Greece to London to highlight the possibilities of the Olympic truce for London 2012.
www.walkfortruce.org
Despite the very best efforts of Foreign Secretary William Hague and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon the calls for peace in Syria on the eve of the Games the fighting went on as the Games went on. During the Games I went out to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon to see conditions for myself. Conditions were appalling and the situation was getting worse every day. Over the next few weeks the two-millionth refugee will flee Syria for safety in a neighbouring country.
Six weeks ago I was appointed to serve on a new select committee in the House of Lords assessing the legacy of the of the Olympic & Paralympic Games and during its early sittings I began to think what the legacy could be of the London 2012 Olympic truce. It wasn't clear that there was one.
It is in our nature to always bewail what others aren't doing rather than focussing on what we could and should be doing. As I pondered a six-week holiday and started surfing the internet for bargain breaks I thought back to my two weeks in Lebanon during the Olympics last year and I was challenged as to how I could put this time to better use this year?
My answer was a walk which began in Whitehall where my previous walk ended in 2012 and ended in Enniskillen where the G8 'pledged' vital money aid the suffering of refugees – most of which is yet to arrive.
Given the great tides in international affairs my effort, even if successful, will be but a drop in the ocean of need. But, as Mother Teresa once said, "that ocean is made up of drops".
Michael Bates is a Conservative peer in the House of Lords
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