User:Ta bhuvanendra

I have great pleasure in giving a brief introduction about Mr. Bhuvanendra. He is a lawyer cum Sports Scientist with International acclaim. He was an outstanding Sri Lankan National Triple Jumper, having won many coveted national awards. He is a research associate of the Nordic Research Symposium and a research member of the International Sociological Association in law, Sports, Youth affairs and Human Rights. Many of his research briefs and position papers have been used as reference material by the United Nations, (office of sport for development and peace) and the Olympic Movement. (IOC, FIFA and IAAF).For a rough summary of his attainments, please log on Google TA_Bhuvanendra. Although he has no less than twenty research monographs to his credit, his major publication is, Human Rights in the Realm of Sport, developed from his doctoral thesis and released in 2009 ( ISBN 978-955-51318-03 ) (barcode 9789555131803). Sensing the importance of the book, the Presidents of the IOC, FIFA and IAAF were gracious enough to oblige with prefatory commendations. For a rough summary of the publication, please logon Google Ta_Bhuvanendra.

His research brief on Human Rights in the Realm of Sports constructed in connection with the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was published by the IOC in the December 98 issue of the Olympic Review, the other two contributions being those of His Excellency, The Judge, Keba Mbaye and Paolo David of the UN. Without being too pretentious, the monograph mentioned above received commendations from the IOC and the UNESCO, among other protagonists of sports, the world over, as an original contribution to a field of study where little research had been undertaken. This paper is widely regarded as the first ever academic contribution on the confluence of Human Rights and Sports. Moreover, this monograph has been used by the Olympic Movement and the UN system alike, as an accepted model for didactic exercises in respect of Human Rights. CECUAD (Centre for Curriculum Advancement) is a non – profit making research organization with all its office bearers holding office in an honorary capacity. The aim and object are two - fold: service oriented and academic. We do research in Law, International Affairs, and Sports relations, Community Development, Human Rights, Refugees and Rehabilitation. The spectrum of activities of the Centre includes conducting of seminars and symposiums on a variety of subjects. We also procure the services of eminent scholars to deliver lectures on subjects of topical interest. The United Nations Office at Vienna (Social Development Division) has made commendable reference about the activities of CECUAD in its official directory of Research Centers engaged in Youth Research. The aim, background and the scope of its activities are more fully described in page 14 of the said Edition UNHCHR civil society / NGO Reference CECUAD – TA_Bhuvanendra T2 31815186 (1E) 511 (1E).

Acknowledging that the civil society organizations are critical actors in the advancement of universal values such as human rights, environment, health, social inclusion and sports interaction and in the context of the designation of an International Year of Volunteers by the UN General Assembly in 2001, CECUAD has duly inducted volunteerism as an additional target area to promote shared interests, purposes and values far and wide to the extent practicable. Mr. Bhuvanendra, was instrumental in floating this organization and was the founder director of CECUAD and continues to serve in different capacities to improve and refine certain areas which are of pivotal importance to enlarge the scope and the strength of the organization as a civil society entity. Further, he has worked assiduously to establish an impressive array of working arrangements and affiliations with international sports federations, youth organizations, NGOs in human Rights, the Non- Aligned Movement and the Council of Europe

I wish to tabulate some of his following major publications.

1.	 GANEFO Games – An International Order for sports disciplines. 2.	Youth interest – Retrospect and Prospect. 3.	Settlement of Conflicts via Diplomacy. 4.	Arbitration in the realm of sport. 5.	Co- operation Agreement between the UNDP and the IOC. 6.	Olympic Academy for South Asia. 7.	Protecting the Olympic Symbols. 8.	International Treaty for sport interaction. 9.	Sports and Human Rights in International Relations. He has presented papers in the following conferences and the presentations have been used by related professional journals and Sports periodicals.

1.	3rd Nordic Youth Research Symposium 			-	Denmark 	- 	1991 2.	First European Conference on Sociology		       - 	Austria 	-  	1992 3.	International Congress on Human Rights		       -	Austria	        -  	1994 4.	4th Nordic Youth Research Symposium			- 	Sweden 	-  	1994 5.	International Conferences on Sociology of law		-	Spain		- 	1995 6.	Law Asia Conference – Colombo				-	Sri Lanka	- 	1996 7.	Law and Society Association Meeting 			-	UK. - 	1996 8.	Research Committee on Sociology of Law Meeting  	-	USA. - 	1997 9.	World Conference on doping in Sport			-	Switzerland	-  	1999 10.	Sports For All Congress					- 	Cuba		- 	2006 11.	Ethics in sport ( Virtual Olympic Congress)		-	Denmark 	- 	2009 He has been in working arrangements with the Olympic Movement for about two decades. During this time, he established a close rapport with the former President of the IOC, Samaranch who had been a great source of inspiration to him. On his demise, as a mark of respect to him, he wrote an impressive appreciation which appeared in many newspapers and magazines. For the benefit of the sports followers, I wish to reproduce the  eulogy in full.

SALUTE TO SAMARANCH By TA_Bhuvanendra

Lawyer cum sports scientist Visiting Fellow of the Nordic Research Symposium Research Associate of the IOC in Human Rights Visiting Professor (adjunct) in Human Rights and Sports Interaction

It was with profound grief that I, like other protagonists of sports the world over, learnt the demise of His Excellency, Juan Antonio Samaranch. I consider it my bounden duty as a protégé of a great sports icon to chronicle, albeit briefly, his track profile. My disposition to express my innermost feelings or rather this brief homage is primarily animated by a sense of loyalty to him as he had been a great source of inspiration to me and guided me all along in my assiduous efforts in grasping the niceties and nuances of Olympism and Sport in the context of International Relations. This is the least I could do for the debt I owe him in particular and the IOC in general. His departure tugs at my heartstring as it surely would have struck others who were the beneficiaries of his benevolence. I count myself lucky in having drawn liberally on the long reserves of his fund of goodwill and sweeping wealth of knowledge. How I wished this privilege could have extended itself perhaps a little longer. At the other end of the spectrum, to soothe our melancholy, we have one consolation that he enjoyed almost a decade of well merited fruitful life in retirement. As a student of Olympism and International Affairs, I have been following the activities of the Olympic Movement for years on end and I admired him from afar. As luck would have it, I had the privilege of visiting the IOC when my monograph, which depicted the Human Rights framework of the Olympic Movement, received the recognition of the IOC. His Excellency Samaranch invited me to be an accredited observer in the World Conference Against Doping in Sports. He granted me audience in Lausanne. I recall and reminisce with nostalgic memories my first meeting with him. Salubrious though the surroundings in Switzerland were, with the biting cold on one side, and my cold feet on the other, I was eagerly waiting with patient expectation to be ushered into his august presence. Realizing my discomfiture literally and figuratively, he greeted me with his usual trademark smile. With his well modulated diction and felicity of expression, he made me feel at home straight away. Thus, began an inspirational journey for which I am ever more grateful and remember him with gratitude. Comparisons are generally presumed to be odious and ominous and it is customary to avoid comparisons of events and personalities of different vintages not least because such exercises, it is believed, won’t lead to any worthwhile conclusions. Nevertheless, the savants of philosophic history contend that history has cumulative wisdom and it could be used as a presaging instrument to understand the past, and by extension, extrapolate the future with some degree of certitude. In simple terms, it is a matter of stock taking and target setting we all do in our chosen field of work. Hence, a brief summary of events and personalities will not be out of place in the present scheme of things. Rarely do individuals contribute in substantial measure to the development of great institutions and principles which far outlive them. With their unbounded commitment, power and radiance of their personality, the depth and range of their insight, and by the steadfastness of purpose of which they had shown themselves capable, they incidentally carve out a permanent niche in the annals of history. It is an aspect of truism that those personalities had become synonymous with some institutions, value system or episodes by their commitment, contribution and concern for common causes. It is hardly possible to conjure up or conceive the European Union without Jean Monnette, the Magna Carta without Symon de monfort, the Abolition of Slavery without Wilberforce, Modern Olympism without Baron, Pierre de Coubertin, the Children’s Games Movement without professor Metod Klemence, the Women’s Sports Movement without the French women crusader Allice Milliat, the Paralympic Movement without the altruistic Sir Ludwig Guttman, to name but a few. The greatness of these towering personalities lies in their innate ability to transform their vision into permanent institution or value systems for the benefit of posterity.

Right at hand, one may illustrate this with the pageant of Olympic history. Baron, Pierre de Coubertin gave expression to his extensive vision, when he founded the Modern Olympics. The Olympic Movement was subsequently tended diligently by such stalwarts as Demetrius Vikelas, Henri de Baillet – Latour, Sigfrid Edstrom, Avery Brundage, Lord Killanin, Marques De Samaranch and currently Jacques Rogge is doing it purposefully. In the Churchilian parlance, never in the history of sport interaction was so much owed by so many to so few. Far from suggesting any prejudice whatsoever, to the leaders, who contributed in their own significant ways, I reckon in my own humble way that Samaranch as the one who brought in the renaissance and the reformation in full measure to the IOC and the Olympic Movement. Many matters influenced my thought process in arriving at this conclusion which I shall expatiate upon as this piece progresses. When he assumed the reins of office, the world was totally different from what it is today. The political contours were fluid; simmering political tensions caused by the cold war, the unhealthy trends of sub-nationalism in many part of the world, the manifestation of terrorism in the Olympic arena, and in the economic front, the biggest economic slowdown in almost half a century and the inevitable inflation the world over. These aspects had ineluctable impact on the Olympic Movement as the sports community is embedded in the political world. At the other end of the scale, with the advent of the telecommunication and satellite revolution, there were prospects and new vistas for the progressive realization of the Olympic ethos and the diversification of the quadrennial sports extravaganza. Samaranch, the intuitive leader that he was, had the uncanny knack to formulate a panoply of arrangements and a raft of measures to give expression to his ideas he thought that would strike a balance between the challenges and prospects. He embarked upon that truly Olympian task with the missionary zeal. His achievements are indeed remarkable and he flitted from one milestone to another with professional aplomb and consummate ease. As space does not permit me to delve deep into his rich vein of success in the multifarious endeavours, I can only catalogue some of his impressive missions in a nutshell: Legal status for the IOC, the Protection of the Olympic Symbols, Athletes Commissions, Empowerment of women, the Court of arbitration for sport, Olympic Museum, Olympic Solidarity, the Protection of Environment and the Co-operation Agreements between the IOC and the UN system. Of these truly incredible and enviable achievements, I would like to elaborate on three aspects which are in my opinion truly high water mark: The status quo of the IOC, Court of Arbitration and the Co-operation Agreements between the two apex bodies.

Legal Status for the IOC: Over many decades, the legal status of the IOC was not an issue nor did it create any legal tangle. But in the mid seventies with rapid inflow of television royalties, the management of funds and the accountability prompted the necessity for the IOC to be a legal personality. The fact remained that IOC was not recognized either by the Swiss Law or Law of any other country. It functioned as a civil society organization dedicated to promote Olympism the world over. However, some efforts were made in the seventies to obtain legal imprimatur for the IOC, but to little avail. As soon as Samaranch assumed office, he went full steam ahead with a series of efforts to achieve the objective. He left no stone unturned to obtain the much desired juridical status. In 1981, the Swizz Federal Council recognized the IOC as an International Non-Governmental Organization with the status of a legal person. Since then, IOC has been interacting with the national and international community as an organization of great consequence.

The Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS): As competitive sport is basically a rule bound zero sum activity, it has perforce to be governed by strict rules to protect the honesty of the individuals and the integrity of the competition. The problem faced by the application of the administrative fiat and the rules of the respective games increased many folds with the passage of time. And a thicket of issues surfaced due to the quantitative development of the Sports World. As a result, Sports Federations were keen in formulating mechanisms for the adjudication of disputes on ad hoc basis.

To harness these trends, the CAS was created through the specific initiative of Samaranch to protect the rights of the practitioners of sports. By this, the protagonists of sports have been endowed with an arrangement to settle their issues speedily and less expensively without recourse to an ordinary court. Today the CAS is regarded as the highest authority in the domain of sports for effective resolution of conflicts.

The United Nations: While continuing the efforts of using Olympism to place sport at the service of mankind, he wanted the Olympic Movement to work in close liaison with the UN system to complement UN efforts to address the challenges and contradictions of the contemporary cosmic community. He worked on this idea for some time and impressed upon the UN system about how sports could be used to address global concerns. As a consequence, in 1993 a new phase of enduring partnership evolved with the UN resolution for the observance of the Olympic Truce. Moreover, the UN passed a resolution for Building a Peaceful and Better World through Sport and the Olympic ideal, thus creating healthy relations with the Sports Movement. It must be mentioned with due acclaim that it was during the tenure of His Excellency, Juan Antonio Samaranch, that the partnership rose to the zenith with many Co-operation Agreements signed between the UN and the IOC. To recapitulate briefly, the IOC has working arrangements with UNDP, FAO, UNDCP, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNEP, ILO and WHO on poverty, food, drug abuse, education, child welfare, humanitarian assistance, environment, child labour and health in the same order. Incidentally, in 2009, the UN granted observer status for the IOC and paid tributes for its efforts for the promotion of the UN Millennium Development Goals. This is a veritable watershed in International Relations - A Magnum Opus. Finally, as this great man of many parts approached the closing stages of his illustrious career, two imposters threatened to set apart the great Movement built, brick by brick by Coubertin, the great. In the furore over the contretemps of doping and in the razzmatazz of bribery scandal, he had to run the gauntlet of criticism as the head of the apex body, but, to be sure, he did not throw the gauntlet, not even as a knee – jerk reaction. He was at his imperturbable best. The people who follow the IOC activities closely or the ones who were fortunate to be in his distinguished company, know for certain, that he had an enviable capacity to pierce through any problem to its core and prescribe remedial or preemptive measures with clinical precision. He acted on the sublime conviction that if anything had taken place it should not have been due to the complacency or the fault of the apex body. He prescribed such meaningful measures as IOC 2000 Commission and the Ethics Commission to ensure that the alleged misdemeanors do not recur. When he passed the mantle of leadership to the current incumbent, he handed over an impeccable legacy, and everything a President can wish for. A full complement of dedicated staff supported by numerous volunteers the world over and a well knit administrative machinery to break fresh grounds for the cause of the dignity and the worth of the human person, which is the length and breadth of Olympism. If one were to review his impressive profile, one will certainly get the feeling of incredulity in the first instance and eventually admire him for his resourcefulness and sincerity of purpose and of course, stand in awe of him, for there was nothing that he did which he did not dignify; there was no cause he espoused which he did not ennoble, and there was no position he held which he did not decorate and there was no role he played which he did not edify. As a sports person, as an administrator, as an Ambassador Plenipotentiary and as a head of the Sports world, he set high standards in performance and morals for others to emulate. As I pen this paean, I am reminded of that Greek Lyric poet, Horace. During the pre Christian era it was customary among poets to name their heirs. Horace in his poetry Monument represented himself as the rightful heir to the earlier Greek poets with pomp and pageantry and with gusto and gesticulations. It occurred to me that Samaranch was good enough to declare himself as the true heir to the Olympic trust. Of course, Samaranch would have dismissed this suggestion with palpable contempt, as he was known to be impervious to praise as much as he was impregnable to undue criticism. It is my personal privilege to elevate him to the apogee, as Samaranch, the greatest gravitated to greatness. When I substituted Horace with Samaranch the epigram suited him to the hilt. I wish to share those fleeting moments of the panegyric in motion with others who I suppose would readily acknowledge it as the most appropriate tribute to Samaranch. With apologies to the poet, Horace I wish to quote the passage and the verbatim translation for others to visualize. Exegi monumentum aere perennius regalique situ pyramidum altius quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens possit diruere aut innumerabilis annorum series et fuga temporum. non omnis moriar. Multaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam. Usque ego postera crescam laude recens. Dum Capitolium scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex; Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium regnavit populorum, ex humili potens princeps Aeolium, carmen ad Italos deduxisse modos. Sume superbiam quaestam meritis et mihi Delphica lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam.

I've raised a monument no king may claim Nor bronze outlast nor pyramid exceed, A thing no puny Northwind nor toothed rain Nor the innumerable years' stampede Nor flying time can batter to the earth. Not all of me will die. A part is strong Enough to flout Queen Death and find rebirth In people's praise long afterward. As long As priest and virgin pace the Capitol, I shall be spoken of where Aufidus flings Wroth waves against the land and Daunus ruled Parched farmlands: I, a humble-blooded prince, Have brought Greek melody to Latin song. O Muse! Take pride in what I am today. My genius is yours, and we have won. Grin down and crown me with the Delphic bay.

In concluding this eulogy, to strike a personal note, it occurs to me time and again, as perhaps it would have struck others too, that Longfellow must have been mindful of the likes of Marques de Samaranch, when he wrote.

“	Lives of great men all remind us	that we can make our lives sublime and in departing leave behind us	footprints in the sands of time “

This brief collage of accolades aside, the veritable platitude of plaudits which paraded before him and the multitude of people who followed him in his last journey to eternity will speak volumes about how he was able to bestride the fulcrums of the Olympic history with certitude and moral rectitude.

My heartfelt condolences go to all those who are deprived of his connection, counsel and camaraderie. May his soul rest in peace - Requiescat in pace Respect and reverence to the teacher - Ave Atque Vale Magister Respectfully remembered by All

Inserted by Eckmo da Aki – Chief of Staff – CECUAD