Olympic organisers invoke ancient truce to call for suspension of war

The tradition stretches back to ancient Greece

Were ancient Greek rules observed today, drone and missile fire over Ukraine would cease on Friday, as guns fell silent in the Olympic tradition.

With the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics beginning next week, the United Nations and organisers are calling for a seven-week global pause in all wars – a plea made before every Games to set a moral baseline amidst rising conflicts and Earth nearing destruction.

In ancient Greece, warring city-states respected a truce, ensuring safe passage for athletes and spectators to Ancient Olympia for competitions and ceremonies of supreme athletic and spiritual significance.

The modern Olympics revived in 1896; the truce resurfaced nearly a century later, in 1994, amidst war in the former Yugoslavia.

The proposed timeout, backed by a UN General Assembly resolution, begins one week before the Winter Games (6 February) and runs until one week after the Paralympics (15 March).

History suggests no sudden worldwide peace is imminent: the truce holds a dismal 0-17 record, having failed to halt a single war.

Fireworks explode during the 2022 Winter Olympic Games closing ceremony in Sochi (AP)

The 1994 Olympic truce

The first modern Olympic truce, during the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, did produce a one-day pause in the siege of Sarajevo, allowing aid convoys to deliver food and medicine to the Bosnian capital’s desperate residents. In Sydney six years later, North and South Korea marched together at the opening ceremony.

Governments around the world overwhelmingly agree that sport can unite and heal.

"Wherever possible, we should strive toward creating even a small space for peace,” Constantinos Filis, director of the International Olympic Truce Center, said.

Ceasefire initiatives still count in an era of global disorder and political polarization, as unilateral aggression increasingly threatens international cooperation, argues Filis, who is also director of the Institute of Global Affairs in Athens.

“This may not always be achievable in practice," he said, "but the message reaches every corner of the globe."

More conflicts than ever

Outside the Swedish capital of Stockholm, a group of academics has tracked global war trends for more than 80 years. It reported that 2024 had the highest number of active armed conflicts in a single year: 61.

“We’ve seen quite a strong increase in the number of conflicts over the past five or six years,” said Shawn Davies, a senior analyst at Uppsala University’s Department of Peace and Conflict Research. And its upcoming annual report will show 2025 had even more conflicts than the prior year, he added.

As the U.S. steps back from multilateralism, Mr Davies said, countries are becoming more likely to test their neighbors, creating a more volatile, fragmented security landscape.

Some major conflicts remain largely unnoticed in the West, he said, pointing to western Africa, where al-Qaida and Islamic State group affiliates continue to spread across borders.

And the “Doomsday Clock”, a symbolic gauge of Earth’s existential peril, edged closer to midnight this week, according to an announcement from members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The Doomsday Clock is now 85 seconds to midnight (AP)

Broken promises

UN truce resolutions typically pass with broad majorities. Yet signatories repeatedly break their own pledge. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 infamously began during a truce period.

“I think the Olympics are an excellent moment to symbolise peace, to symbolise respect for international law, and to symbolise international cooperation,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.

Kirsty Coventry, the multi-Olympic swimming champion who last year became the first woman to lead the International Olympic Committee, addressed the General Assembly at the latest vote in November.

Watching peaceful competition, she said, inspired her to begin her gold-medal journey as a young girl in Zimbabwe.

“Even in these dark times of division, it is possible to celebrate our shared humanity and inspire hope for a better future,” Ms Coventry said.

“Sport — and the Olympic Games in particular — can offer a rare space where people meet not as adversaries, but as fellow human beings,” she said.

“This is why the Olympic Truce is so important.”