Understanding Olympic Diplomacy: The Refugee Team at the 2020 Tokyo Games

Abstract

At the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, 29 athletes competed for the Olympic Refugee Team. It was the second time in the history of the Summer Olympic Games that athletes from different origins but living under refugee conditions competed under the same flag. This article aims to analyze the composition of the refugee team, identifying the connections between the athletes' points of origin and destination and the status of official refugee data around the world. As a result, it is observed that the Olympic refugee team plays an important role in giving visibility to this social issue, which is an expensive topic nowadays and enables high-performance athletes not to be excluded from the Olympic Games due to political problems. There is also an important political and diplomatic role played by the International Olympic Committee, allowing the presence of these athletes, but also of competitors from countries that are points of origin for refugees. However, there are still some challenges, such as the concentration of athletes currently living in Europe, facing a low number of refugees who live elsewhere, despite a large number of refugees living in other continents.