WBD’s Young added: “We are delighted to welcome Yusra Mardini to our ranks, an inspirational athlete and storyteller who will join our team of anchors embedded in the heart of Paris this summer to help us authentically connect audiences around the world with the athletes and stories from the Refugee Olympic Team.”
Raising awareness of refugee demands
The Refugee Olympic Team was first created for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach to help potential elite athletes affected by the global refugee crisis. Following this historic participation, Olympic Scholarships for Refugee Athletes were established.
The scholarships are fully funded by the IOC through the Olympic Solidarity program for refugee athletes and administered by the Olympic Refugee Foundation (ORF). Fifty refugee athlete scholarship holders were supported in the build-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, with 29 athletes in 12 sports eventually selected to compete for the IOC Refugee Olympic Team at these Games.
A total of 74 refugee athletes have benefited from scholarships for Paris 2024. They live in 24 host countries and represent 14 sports.
According to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, more than 114 million people worldwide are estimated to have been forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict and human rights violations. This represents an increase of more than 40 percent since the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, or roughly double the number since the first refugee athletes competed in Rio in 2016.
WBD is dedicated to helping vulnerable communities and aims to use sport and storytelling to raise awareness of refugee issues. In 2023, at the UNHCR World Refugee Forum, it signed the Multistakeholder Pledge on Sport for Inclusion and Protection of Refugees (Sport Pledge), which promotes access to sport and creates opportunities for displaced and local communities, helping to build more inclusive and united societies. The Sport Pledge was developed by a dedicated multi-stakeholder team and is led by the Olympic Refuge Foundation, UNHCR and the Scort Foundation, as co-conveners of the Sport for Refugees Coalition.