There will not be an international refugee team competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics
During the 2016 Olympic Games the International Olympic Committee allowed a collective team of refugees to compete as a way of highlighting the global crises of displaced people. There will not be a similar team for this year's Winter Games.
In an email, a spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee confirmed to Mashable that there would not be a team made up of people who fled their home countries because of conflict or persecution competing in Pyeongchang, South Korea, under the Olympic flag.
Instead, the Olympic Committee has launched a new foundation to support refugees called Refugee Athlete Support.
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"Building on the experience of the Olympic Games Rio 2016 and the participation for the first time of the Refugee Olympic Team, it was decided to create a dedicated program that would provide National Olympic Committees with the opportunity to identify and support a small number of refugee athletes living in their countries to prepare and participate in international competitions," the spokesperson wrote.
The program will release grants to local organizations looking for funds to help displaced people interested in "athlete development." It does not list possible avenues for these people who benefit from the grants being able to compete in the Olympic games for other countries.
According to UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, the forced displacement of people around the world is currently at its highest level in decades. More than 65 million people are forcibly displaced globally, including 22.5 million refugees -- half of whom are children.
While it opted for a different path for these Olympic Games, the IOC is not counting out the possibility of including a future refugee team at this point.
"As for the potential participation of a Refugee Olympic Team in future Olympic Games, nothing has been decided yet," the spokesperson said. "The IOC always made it clear that having a Refugee Team at the Olympic Games was not an aim but a means to help refugee athletes and raise awareness of the issue. In an ideal world, we would not need to have a Refugee Team at the Games."
Mashable has reached out to former members of the Olympics refugee team for comment and will update this post if they get back to us.
Topics Activism Olympics Social Good
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