IWF120y/5 – 2023: Creation of the IWF Refugee Team

At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro (BRA), an important novelty occurred: the International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team. Consisting of 10 athletes, this important symbolic step was aimed at raising global awareness of the growing number of refugees worldwide. In Tokyo 2020ne the Team comprised 29 athletes (including one lifter – Cyrille Tchatchet) and before the Paris Olympics, the IWF decided to create, in 2023, its own Refugee Team. It consisted of seven athletes: four women – Parisa Jahanfekrian, originally from Iran, but residing in Germany, Clementine Meukeugni Noumbissi (Cameroon/Great Britain), Aline de Souza (Brazil/USA), Monique Lima de Araujo (Brazil/USA) -, and three men – Addriel Garcia (Cuba/Italy), Fawaz Mohammed Saleh Hussein (Yemen/Saudi Arabia), and Reza Rouhi (Iran/Great Britain). At the 2023 IWF World Championships in Riyadh (KSA), Aline de Souza became officially the first IWF Refugee Athlete in action, in the women’s 55kg category. In 2024, the project continued with four IWF lifters, plus two athletes included in the IOC Refugee Team Scholarship programme. Those two lifters – Ramiro Mora and Yekta Jamali – were selected for the 37-member team that constituted the Refugee Olympic Team competing in Paris. At the IWF level, Jamali (photo) was the first refugee lifter to get a medal, earning bronze at the 2024 IWF World Junior Championships, in the women’s 81kg. To provide more stability to the programme, the next IWF Refugee Team will be in place for the period 2025-2028.