In Praise of Refugee Athletes Competing at the Olympic Games

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 U.S. economic sanctions.

This year the 37 members of the Refugee Olympic Team have something else in common: all of their home countries are facing often crippling U.S. 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. In 2016 war was the biggest reason people were forced to leave their homes. By 2021 wars were still raging, but climate crises and especially the Covid-19 pandemic were creating refugees by the millions.

And all those crises—and the resulting escalation in forced migration—were and continue to be made significantly worse by U.S. economic sanctions. Two years before the Rio Olympics, the UN Human Rights Council expressed alarm at “the disproportionate and indiscriminate human costs of unilateral sanctions and their negative effects on the civilian population.”

In Iran, for example, the U.S. imposed extreme sanctions in 2018 when then-President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal despite recognition by the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency that Tehran was in compliance with the deal’s requirements. The sanctions’ impact on civilians was dire. According to Human Rights Watch, the sanctions “pose a serious threat to Iranians’ right to health and access to essential medicines,” something especially dangerous during the Covid-19 pandemic that was about to hit. While the Biden administration lifted some of those Trump-era sanctions, many remain in place and were significantly tightened in April 2024. Fourteen members of the Olympic Refugee Team are from Iran.

Whatever the specific conditions that forced each of them to leave their homes, U.S. policy is one of the factors that made things worse in their countries.

In Afghanistan, sanctions cause famine. In 2022, head of the International Rescue Committee and former UK foreign minister David Miliband told the U.S. Senate that the policy of cutting Afghanistan off from financial flows—aka sanctions—was “the proximate cause of this starvation crisis.” Five of the Refugee Team come from Afghanistan.

The 37 athletes brought audiences to their feet, on the banks of the Seine and on screens around the world. But the triumph and beauty of the Refugee Team, and all that these young people have accomplished despite having been forced to leave their homes, cannot hide the stark reality that mass displacement on a global scale has become the new normal. And whatever the specific conditions that forced each of them to leave their homes, U.S. policy is one of the factors that made things worse in their countries.

Providing world-class athletes dispossessed from their homes a chance to compete in the Olympic games is a gift—to them and their communities, and to the rest of us watching and cheering them on. But at the end of the day, the need for such a team speaks to our failure—to stop the normalization of forced displacement, and to reverse the conditions that create it in the first place. Including ending U.S. economic sanctions. The chance to win a medal in Paris is great—but wouldn’t it be better if these amazing athletes could instead win the right to return safely home instead?