Warner Bros. Discovery Champions to Support Refugee Olympic Team at Paris 2024

WBD’s Young added: „We’re thrilled to welcome inspirational athlete and storyteller Yuzra Martini to our ranks, who will join our anchor team this summer in the heart of Paris to help connect real audiences with athletes around the world and the stories of the Refugee Olympic Team.

Raising awareness of refugee causes

The Refugee Olympic Committee was originally created for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach to help elite athletes affected by the global refugee crisis. Following this historic participation, the Olympic Scholarship for Refugee Athletes was established.

The scholarships are fully funded by the IOC through the Olympic Solidarity Program for Refugee Athletes and are administered by the Olympic Refugee Foundation (ORF). Fifty refugee athlete scholarship recipients were supported to build the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, with 29 athletes in 12 sports ultimately selected to compete for the IOC Refugee Olympic Team in those sports.

A total of 74 refugee athletes have benefited from scholarships for Paris 2024. They reside in 24 host countries and represent 14 sports.

According to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, it is estimated that more than 114 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced by persecution, conflict and human rights violations. This represents an increase of more than 40 percent since the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, or roughly double since the first refugee athletes competed in Rio 2016.

WBD is dedicated to helping vulnerable communities and aims to use play and storytelling to raise awareness of refugee issues. In 2023, UNHCR signed a multi-stakeholder pledge to include and protect refugees (Sport Pledge) at the Global Refugee Forum, which promotes access to sport and creates opportunities for displaced people and local communities and united associations. The Sports Pledge was developed by a dedicated multi-stakeholder group and led by the Olympic Asylum Foundation, UNHCR and Scard Foundation, as co-conveners of the Sports Alliance for Refugees.

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