Refugee athletes

It was a spectacular parade of lighted boats filled with some of the best athletes in the world that sailed up the Seine to open the 2024 Olympics. Among them, second in line following the Greek team, traditionally the first to enter the Olympic stadium, was a small craft filled with 37 competitors in white uniforms, grinning and waving to the thousands of spectators. Their flag carrier was boxer Cindy Ngamba. A few days later she would win the first Olympic medal for her team.

But Ngamba, from Cameroon, did not win that bronze medal for her home country. And the flag that Ngamba, from Cameroon, and her co-flag-bearer Yahya al Ghotany, from Syria, waved proudly above their heads was not that of either their countries. Ngamba and al Ghotany are members of the Refugee Olympic Team, carrying the Olympic flag and wearing the five interlocked circles on their jackets. Their flag is raised to the notes of the Olympic hymn, not their national anthems.

The idea of a refugee team first emerged in 2016 – and unfortunately not much has changed. Like before, all of the athletes on the team have been forced from their homes by some combination of war, exploding climate change, massive human rights violations, and economic crisis.

This year the 37 members of the Refugee Olympic Team have something else in common: all of their home countries are facing often crippling US economic sanctions.

The Rio Olympics in 2016 took place in the midst of the mass displacement crisis resulting from the civil war in Syria. At that time, there were 67 million people in the world forcibly displaced, a population comparable to that of France and bigger than those of Italy or South Africa. If it were a country, Refugee Nation would have been the 23rd largest population in the world.

By the time of the Tokyo games in 2021, Refugee Nation had grown to 82 million and was then the 20th largest in the world, situated just between Thailand and Germany.

And this year, as the 2024 Olympic torch was lit in Paris, the number of forcibly displaced people has soared to 107 million, and Refugee Nation has risen through the ranks to become the 15th largest population in the world – just behind Egypt.

Forced displacement has been on the rise for a very long time. And the conditions driving people from their homes – war, repression, economic and climate crises – are on the rise as well.

Excerpted: ‘In Praise of Refugee Athletes Competing at the Olympic Games’.

Courtesy: Commondreams.org