The Refugee Olympic Team is a group made up of independent Olympic participants who are refugees. In March 2016, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach announced the creation of the Refugee Olympic Athletes Team, as a symbol of hope for all refugees in the world in order to raise global awareness of the scale of the migrant crisis in Europe. In September 2017, the IOC established the Olympic Refugee Foundation to supporting refugees over the long term.[1][2]
The Olympic flag and the Olympic Hymn are used as team symbols. The participating athletes marched in the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics, with the team entering the stadium as the penultimate delegation, just before the host country. At the 2020 Summer Olympics, the team entered the stadium second only to Greece.
At the 2016 Summer Olympics, the team used the IOC country code ROT, but at the 2020 Summer Olympics this was changed to EOR for French Équipe olympique des réfugiés. As of 2022, no refugee Olympic athletes had participated in the Winter Olympic Games.
The team was awarded the 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for Sport for giving athletes the opportunity in conflict zones and places where human rights are violated, preventing them from performing their sporting and personal activities.[3]
Participations
This category was created in March 2016. The selection criteria include the sporting level, the official refugee status verified by the United Nations, the personal situation, and the background of each athlete.
At its meeting in Buenos Aires in October 2018, the International Olympic Committee decided to establish the Refugee Olympic Team (EOR) for the 2020 Summer Olympics. This decision built on the legacy of the Refugee Olympic Team in 2016 and was part of the IOC's commitment to play its part in addressing the global refugee crisis and in carrying the message of solidarity and hope to millions of refugee athletes around the world.
The IOC Session tasked Olympic Solidarity with establishing the conditions of participation and defining the team identification and selection process. These elements were carried out in close collaboration with the National Olympic Committees, the International Sports Federations, the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). On 20 June 2019, the IOC released the list of Refugee Athlete Scholarship holders who wished to join the IOC Refugee Olympic Team, Tokyo 2020. This announcement was made on World Athlete Day, celebrated every year on 20 June.
The 46 Refugee Athlete Scholarship holders include the 10 athletes who were part of the first Refugee Olympic Team in 2016, new individual athletes, and a group of athletes preparing at the Tegla Loroupe Refugee Training Center in Kenya. They compete in nine sports. All were assisted by Olympic Solidarity as part of its support program for refugee athletes. Hailing from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria, refugee scholarship holders competed in athletics, badminton, boxing, cycling, judo, karate, shooting, swimming, taekwondo, weightlifting, and wrestling.
