The International Canoe Federation’s growing partnership with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) saw the global governing body for paddle sport support UNITAR’s five-day Executive Diploma in Sports Diplomacy in Geneva, Switzerland.
The programme, set to conclude on January 30, will feature three day-long workshops on Sports Diplomacy: Theory and Practice; Leadership Skills in International Sports Fields, and Mega Sporting Event Legacy.
It will finish with two days of field visits to various organisations in the Lake Léman Region.
ICF Vice President Lluis Rabaneda was among the panelists on day one, as part of the roundtable on leadership in international sports fields.
From defining the different types of leadership in sports to critically assessing and delivering a roadmap on big-scale sporting events that underline soft power, the interactive programme will feature participants engaging in problem-solving activities.
The new chapter, as part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreed upon with ICF and UNITAR in 2025, will not only help participants foster collaboration and critical thinking but also enable them to apply their knowledge to real-world scenarios.
“I will say that for me, the leadership intersection of sport, diplomacy, and international events, it's about building bridges and not exercising hierarchy. I think that's key,” Rabaneda said.
“If you want to really do something with a lot of people, different cultures, different countries, you need to build these bridges.”
“It was a great pleasure to welcome Lluis to our programme. His contribution to our roundtable discussion was a valuable complement to the programme’s first-day focus on leadership in international sport, helping bridge the conceptual frameworks we covered in the morning with real-world practice,” Marcal Jane Garcia, Sports Partnerships Lead in the Division for Multilateral Diplomacy at UNITAR, said.
“His reflections on the ICF’s multi-level stakeholder engagement - especially in the organization of events - excellently demonstrated the value of sport as a means to drive cooperation and sustainable legacies of inclusion, good governance, and development.
“His intervention, which served as a testament to UNITAR’s partnership with ICF, played an important role in advancing participants’ learning journey as UNITAR continues to train them on how to strategically leverage sport to support diplomacy, multilateral cooperation, and sustainable development.”
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