Topic: 2025-Safeguarding and Promoting Traditional Sports and Games
Country: France
Delegate Name: Addie Woltil
As a country rich with traditions and a strong national identity, we greatly value the importance of retaining and upkeep cultural heritage and identity, especially through the preservation and practice of traditional sports and games (TSG). Many TSG has been both founded and played throughout France, such as pétanque, a team-based boules sport, gouren, a folk wrestling style in Brittany, course landaise, a form of bull-leaping originating in Gascon and Joutes Nautique, water jousting in Southern France, which have been founded within our borders and have spread throughout Europe and regionally. France also contains a blend of cross-cultural identities founded through centuries of collaboration and continuation of unique cultures, including that of the Provencal ethnic group, the Occitans. Part of this stems from the adaptation of the Southern France dialect that is derived from native Occitan speakers and language in the region. There is also a nationwide effort to preserve the language, which has been succeeded through bilingual road signs, regional language rejuvenation, and bilingual schools. France holds the preservation of TSG to the same standards and efforts.
France fully supports the goal of maintaining cultural heritage and specifically respects the importance of community and individualistic identities within these communities that often lie in TSG and the historical and cultural significance they hold. As some of these communities and their history are lost to conflicts or a lack of widespread information, it is more important than ever before for us to archive and keep alive the traditions of these activities and their importance within the communities and on a global scale. In the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, France supported articles passed for the protection, promotion, and revitalization of intangible cultural heritage, such as TSG. France also participates in networks of TSG preservation, such as the Association of International Traditional Sports and Games (ITSGA) and the Association Européenne des Jeux et Sports Traditionnels (AEJeST), in an effort to spread global awareness of TSG and their importance to cultural identity.
TSG plays an integral role in the protection and maintenance of respective cultures and their histories, and the way to preserve this cultural importance is through increased promotion, education, and safeguarding of TSG. France proposes and advocates for an increase in media attention and awareness of TSG, specifically through regional or international events to honor and bring attention to them; however, it is most important to ensure that the identity, intention, and heritage of traditions behind the sports and games are preserved and kept the same. France also advocates for the further involvement of outside committees and departments inclusion and the international archive and database of all known TSG. This database would be able to keep track of the history and culture behind each TSG and promote their education. Education and promotion are essential in revitalizing and protecting the history and future of TSG and can be achieved through a combined global and regional effort for knowledge and preservation.
Sport and development – France Diplomacy
Safeguarding Cultural Heritage – Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations in New York
Regional and Minority Languages in France – Library of Congress
Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage – UNESCO
Association of International Traditional Sports and Games (ITSGA)
Association Européenne des Jeux et Sports Traditionnels (AEJeST)
