日本における障がい者スポーツを 通じた国際協力の展開

In recent years the United Nations and other international organizations have experimented with incorporating the power of sports into international cooperation projects. This paper will focus on the development of international cooperation projects that involve disability sports. In addition to the traditional role of rehabilitation intended for such sports in bringing about an individual's physical recovery, there are now expectations that disability sports can serve to empower people with disabilities in developing countries, change community attitudes towards people with disabilities, and promote their participation in their communities. <br><br> While the decision to award Tokyo the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games acted as a catalyst for the increased demand also in Japan for sports-based international cooperation projects, to date, understanding the current status of international cooperation initiatives in Japan involving disability sports has been limited to efforts by individual organizations such as ODA, JICA, NGOs and sports associations. No attempt has been made to establish an organized process for understanding the current status of programs conducted in Japan as a whole. To address this, this paper brings together as many cases as possible of Japanese international cooperation projects involving disability sports, and sets out what organizations in Japan conducted what kind of project. <br><br> Developing International Cooperation in Japan through Disability Sports conducted by Japanese organizations is not large, there has been a steady stream conducted chiefly by JICA volunteers. Including other government-related support projects and projects by private sector groups, this paper has found 70 projects. <br><br> Based on what the projects provide, they can be categorized into economic cooperation, material resources cooperation, or human resources cooperation. Further organizing the projects based on type of activity results in 12 different categories. They primarily involve the dispatch of Japanese disability sports leaders and educators to provide personnel support in the development of exercise and sports programs for people with disabilities in the host country. Financial and material resources were provided as foundational support for those activities. Projects involving the dispatch of personnel, categorized in this paper as human resources cooperation projects, are characterized by a wide scope of aspects that they encompass. They are involved not only in spreading disability sports and fostering athletes, but also in the design of programs and systems for the advancement of disability sports in the host country. While it is important to keep producing top athletes and foster individuals who can become local role models, for the full benefits of the projects to be sustained, support is required to build the recipient country's citizens' own capacity to operate its disability sports system independently and on an ongoing basis, after Japan's support comes to an end. <br><br> The discussion in this paper is mainly from the perspective of the advancement of disability sports, and the projects collected for this paper are those which mainly benefit people with disabilities. However, from the perspective of promoting sports based not only on being disabled or able-bodied, but also sports that can be played regardless of age and gender, the possibility exists for taking up many social issues, where the focus is not limited to benefitting people with disabilities. The possibility exists for developing a wide variety of international cooperation programs with their own aims and characteristics, based on whether disability sports is treated as its own category of sports, or where the primary aim is to encourage people with disabilities to participate in sports.