Jonah Lomu, Marie-Jo Pérec, Sebastien Loeb and Hicham El Guerrouj are now members of the Champions for Peace Club, an initiative by the international organisation Peace and Sport.

The announcement was made during the Opening Ceremony of the 4th Peace and Sport International Forum in Monaco, in the presence of HSH Prince Albert II and more than 500 top decision-makers from 90 countries involved in sport, politics and the private sector.

Perec, who specialised in the 200 metres and 400 metres, is a double world champion and triple Olympic champion from France, Lomu a rugby legend from New Zealand, Loeb a French seven-time car rally world champion and Guerrouj an Olympic champion and four-time world champion in middle-distance running.

With these new recruits, the Champions for Peace club now boasts 52 elite athletes of 29 different nationalities, including Britain's Paula Radcliffe.



They represent 27 Olympic and non-Olympic sports disciplines with a total of 67 World Champion titles, 27 Olympic champion titles and more than 150 national and regional titles.

Each in their own way, Champions for Peace take action to ensure that the values of sport contribute to dialogue, rapprochement and reconciliation between communities that have been divided by armed conflict, extreme poverty or lack of social cohesion.

Since the club was launched a year ago, 15 Champions for Peace have been involved in operations for peace-building and peace-promotion, visiting some of the world's most vulnerable areas such as Haiti, Colombia, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Israel-Palestine and East Timor.

Sebastien Chabal, the charismatic French rugby player, has announced he will sponsor the program "Je cire, j'étudie, je joue au rugby (I shine shoes, I study, I play rugby) in Cote d'Ivoire run by the International Rugby Board (IRB) and Peace and Sport, which aims to educate and socially integrate street children in Abidjan, Bouake and Daloa who are forced to work for a living.


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