Nenad Djurdjević, Ph.D

INTERNATIONAL LAW ASPECTS OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPORT AND HEALTH

It is generally accepted in modern world that sporting activities are useful for personality development as well as maintaining good health, improving physical quality, greater personal satisfaction, better and more meaningful use of free time and improving quality of life. The most important international organizations (United Nations, Council of Europe, European Union) have long tradition in fundamental considering of the relationship between sport and health in all of their aspects. In this paper, the author points out the most important international law acts where the matter of relationship between sport and health has been considered directly or indirectly. Legal significance of all those acts is not the same (Conventions, Resolutions, Recommendations, Directives), but all of them are significant for Serbia, because in the first place, Serbia is a member-state of the United Nations and Council of Europe and therefore it has the obligations from membership presupposing respect of generally accepted views, and secondly it intends to become a member of the European Union and to adjust its national law system with communitarian law and values and attitudes  in such community of European peoples. The author concludes that only good understanding of researching carried out by the United Nations, Council of Europe and European Union in respect to sport and health relationship and acts that were enacted on the base of such researching, may enable Serbia to, on one hand, get clearer picture of situation in the country concerning the level reached in population health protection improvement through sport, and from the other side, to realize the importance of sports medicine development or special health protection of athletes.

Key words: sport, health, sports medicine, health protection, international law, international organizations.