Olympics Refugee Team Raises Big Questions
Olympics Refugee Team Raises Big Questions
By Teklit Michael, Refugee Congress Delegate for Maryland
When I turn on the TV on July 25 to watch the 29 refugee athletes competing in the Tokyo Olympics under the stateless flag – several of whom are people I know – I will be beaming with pride for their achievements. As a former athlete who once dreamed of competing in the Olympics, I know the backbreaking work and unyielding dedication required to achieve excellence.
Unfortunately, my own Olympic dreams were cut short when I was forced to flee my home country, Eritrea. For this reason, I also feel a depth of gratitude to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, for providing this platform for refugee athletes to make their dreams come true.
However, I do look at the team of stateless athletes with sadness as well. Sadness for the homes they lost, and for the lost opportunities of others like them with different skills and dreams they have been unable to pursue.
Right now, 5.8 million refugees have been living in camps for more than 20 years. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the entire population of countries like New Zealand, Ireland, and Norway. While the camps give them the basic protection from the life-threatening persecution from which they fled, each of these nearly 6 million people have skills, dreams and potential going unnurtured and untapped.
For many of these people, any attempts to move forward are stifled based solely on their legal status, or lack thereof. If they apply for student or work visas abroad, they will be denied and viewed as lowly refugees, incapable of anything greater than charity and handouts. If they take their future into their own hands and continue their journey through smugglers, crossing borders in the night, they will be looked at as criminals. Governments build fences and walls to block their path to freedom, and pass laws that throw them in cages and deny them their basic rights to work and be self-sufficient.
For every brilliant athlete, or brain surgeon or academic who happens to be a refugee, I would like us to consider the total loss of human potential of all those other people who are right now relying on us to help them. Every single one of the people living in these camps deserves our attention because right now we are denying them, and our planet, the opportunity to thrive and benefit from their potential.
Refugees do not want to spend their lives relying on handouts and charity. After the initial displacement when we find ourselves in a foreign land with no safety net, a loaf of bread and a warm blanket are a welcome gift. However, after decades of displacement, this reliance on charity whittles away at our sense of dignity and pride. We do not want to spend our lives languishing in camps taking handouts. All refugees need is an opportunity. An opportunity to study, to learn, to work, to decide where we live and what we do, just like any other person in this world.
In an ideal world, we would not need to have a Refugee Team at the games. After all, many refugees do not leave home because they want to leave their country and loved ones behind to live in a world of darkness, strange customs, unemployment lines, food stamps, racial discrimination. They do so because authoritarian regimes and outbreaks of violence force them to do so, and they dream of the day they can return home in safety.
To be labelled as a “refugee” is to have the rest of your identity stripped away from you. You become one-dimensional. Imagine for a moment being reduced only to the one worst experience that happened in your life. You are no longer a mother, a son, a student, a business owner, a teacher, an athlete. You are only a refugee.
Thanks to UNHCR’s stateless team at the Olympics, there is growing visibility of the fact that with opportunity, refugees can be so much more. This is one step in a long process of shifting the paradigm, and it is my hope that every government and every individual can walk this journey of reclaiming identity and opportunity.
Teklit Michael is the Refugee Congress Delegate for Maryland. After spending over a decade advocating for his rights as an asylum-seeker in Israel, Michael now resides in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The opinions of Refugee Congress Members expressed in articles authored by them on the Refugee Congress Blog are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the entire organization.
