IOC Refugee Olympic Team: Changing the rhetoric and portrayal of refugees
In the latest edition of the Olympics.com podcast, marking World Refugee Day, Masomah Ali Zada and Cyrille Thatchet reflect on their leadership roles with the Refugee Olympic Team and the team’s positive influence.
Talent. Resilience. Inspiration.
These are just some of the values the IOC Refugee Olympic Team conveys to the world by participating in the Olympic Games.
To mark World Refugee Day on 20 June, the Head of Olympic Refuge Foundation Jojo Ferris explores the positive elements of the Olympic Refugee Team in the latest episode of the Olympics.com podcast.
"We have an opportunity during the Olympic Games to really change that rhetoric, change the way the public and often times the media are portraying refugees,” says Ferris in the episode where she is joined by Olympians Masomah Ali Zada and Cyrille Thatchet who are part of the officials who will guide the team at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
The discussion focussed on how the participation of the athletes at the Olympics helps change narratives about migrants and displaced people, but also relays a message of inclusion to fellow refugees that aligns with the global theme for this year’s World Refugee Day - For a World Where Refugees Are Welcomed.
"Rather than showing the positive contribution they make to our community and societies, it’s often done in a negative rhetoric," notes Ferris.
"I know how important it is to be a Chef de Mission for this unique team, because we don’t just represent a refugee Olympic team," adds Ali Zada, who competed at the Team Trial at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
"We represent more than 114 million people…who have a lot of dreams, a lot of objectives, a lot of potential but didn’t have the opportunity."
"I was surprised and shocked to be given this big responsibility of being the Welfare Officer of the refugee team,” admits weightlifter Tchatchet.
"Refugees can compete. Refugees can study. Refugees can be nurses, doctors. It also means that we can also be administrators. They can also be support staff and can also support teams to achieve great things." - Cyrille Thatchet, Welfare Officer of the Refugee Olympic Team
Building on the success of the IOC Refugee Olympic Teams at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, the IOC named a team of 36 athletes from 11 different countries competing across 12 sports, to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
"Not everyone can represent the Refugee Olympic team. This is a privilege"
A marked departure from previous versions of the team was the appointment of two members of the Refugee Olympic Team, Ali Zada and Tchatchet, as team officials.
Ali Zada is a cyclist from Afghanistan who competed at Team Trial event. She had to flee her home twice, first to Iran, where she discovered cycling.
"When I was about two years old, the Taliban arrived in our village, and we were forced to go to Iran, and it was there that I learned to bike. It was my father that [taught] me how to bike. But when we returned to Afghanistan, I saw that the situation of women was totally different."
As a member of the Afghan women’s cycling team, she endured physical and verbal harassment while on her bike back home. But she kept peddling.
"For most people in Afghanistan, it was their first time to see a girl on the bike and in sports clothes. It was really strange for them, and they were shocked. Most of them would not agree with that, and they thought that it’s their responsibility to stop us or to insult us or to hurt us."
"It was too difficult to do cycling as a professional sport because at the beginning, my objective it was to participate in the international competition… But the situation was very complicated in Afghanistan, and I was forced to leave my country for the second time, and I came to France in 2017."
Unlike Masomah, Tchatchet took up weightlifting as a teenager in his home nation of Cameroon and even competed at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. That’s when he decided to stay on and seek asylum, a complicated process that drove him to a deep, dark place.
"My first few months in the UK were very difficult…[For] about two months. I experienced homelessness. I didn't have anyone in Brighton to support me. I had to kind of survive on the streets," he told Olympic.com’s podcast of his endless free fall through grief when he was only 19.
"I came to a point where I became quite hopeless, which was the kind of worst point where I actually thought about committing suicide… But luckily, I was quickly rescued from that point and that's where I [sought] asylum and was taken to safety."
Tchatchet was able to find support and even a gym to continue training as a weightlifter and even enrol for a degree at the Middlesex University.
Since graduating with a first-class degree in mental-health nursing, he's been hired by the National Health Service (NHS). He also achieved another career high by competing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, fulfilling a dream.
"I have this statement that my coach told me, a couple of years ago, when we were preparing for Tokyo. He said that, ‘everyone can represent the country if they're good enough. But not everyone can represent the Refugee Olympic team. So this is a privilege. This is an honour’."
"It showed me that you know everything is possible because being a refugee athlete, it was very difficult to compete internationally. So being part of this team gave me hope and made me feel accepted."
Former Refugee Team athletes Masomah Ali Zada and Cyrille Tchatchet on going back to Olympic venues in new roles
Both athletes will be back in the Olympic spotlight in Paris but will not feature in the competition schedules, as they will be serving in very different roles.
"I am really, really honoured and privileged to represent refugees, world refugees and athletes and none athletes… For me, it means a lot because I passed most of my years as a refugee first in Iran and France," said Masomah who is just completing her civil engineering studies at the University of Lille.
"I know how difficult it is to be a refugee. What is the challenge of refugees, and I think all refugees, and they need to be represented to talk about them, to talk about their challenges and to try to find a solution to resolve this problem."
Tchatchet also happily expanded on his expected role with the Refugee Team, "As a welfare officer, I am looking to support the refugee athletes with emotional support, motivational support, making sure they are comfortable and confident, making sure they share only the things that they want to share."
In Paris, the Refugee Olympic Team will be much larger than the team that debuted at the Olympics, but it will still represent only a small fraction of the millions of forcibly displaced people globally.
"Ten athletes that competed in that first team and unfortunately the size of the third team competing in Paris is very much a reflection on the global situation and the crisis. About 120 million people have been forced to flee their homes, and that one in every 69 people," explained Ferris, putting numbers into perspective.
"I'd say over these years from 2016, it wasn't the starting point. The IOC had been partnering with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR for more than 20 years, so was well aware of the role of sport and the possibilities that sport could provide for refugees and displaced people. That was really the catalyst of a more concerted and consistent efforts."
In this episode of the podcast, the athletes and the head of the Olympic Refugee Foundation agree that the team's presence at the Olympic Games continue to underline their resilience while sending a message of hope to the increasing number of refugees.
This team symbolizes unity, inclusion, non-discrimination, the right to sport. So, it is a symbol of the Olympic ideals. - Jojo Ferris, the Head of Olympic Refugee Foundation.
"This really offers an opportunity to showcase not just the talent, but also when people are given an opportunity, when the support is provided and the humanity, and these extraordinary individuals, that really can shine a spotlight as well and be a symbol for many, many more people," added Ferris.
"We hope that the Refugee Olympic team could help to talk about the challenge of the refugees and to find the solution. And most importantly, that the war is finished in all countries, and we could all live together in peace,” reckoned Ali Zada, the Chef de Mission, a role Kenya’s Tegla Loroupe served in Rio and Tokyo.
"I remember in 2014 when I went to this weightlifting club, the coach just handed me the keys of the club. He didn’t know me. This gesture was very, very powerful in helping me continue practising this sport that I like. I would call on everyone to be kind…welcome refugees with open arms," said Tchachet in closing.