How shared passion for football helps build social cohesion

Its not’s so much a football pitch as a sandpit interspersed with a series of grass tufts. It’s impossible for the players to predict which way the ball will bounce and difficult for them to control the ball. The game is played as broods of hens from the nearby village regularly traverse the pitch, blissfully unaware they could be unintentionally trampled or hit by the ball.

But the unfavourable conditions do nothing to diminish the unbridled enthusiasm of players and several hundred spectators for the soccer game in the village of Katundu, about 20km outside Kalemie, as they take on local rivals from the village of Kazana.

The match is supported by Congolese partners and a variety of UN agencies – including UNICEF, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – who between them pay for the teams’ kit and equipment, including the football, from funds donated by the Peace Building Fund of the UN Secretary-General.

UNICEF views the initiative as a key part of its Social Behaviour Change programme to use soccer as a means of promoting peace and social cohesion. As such, it is also a crucial part of the nexus approach. Eight villages of the area compete once a month as part of a fiercely contested league system, which is attracting increasingly large and vociferous crowds.