Six refugee runners carry a message of hope to the World Championships

In August 2025, World Athletics named a six-strong Athlete Refugee Team to compete at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, providing one of the most powerful storylines of the meet. The team brought together runners who had been forced from their homes by conflict and displacement, yet who continued to pursue athletics at the highest level.

The squad comprised Farida Abaroge in the women's 5000m, Perina Lokure Nakang in the women's 800m, Musa Suliman in the men's 800m, Jamal Abdelmaji Eisa Mohammed in the men's 5000m, and Omar Hassan and Emmanuel Kiruhura Ntagunga in the men's marathon. Three of them, Abaroge, Nakang and Suliman, had previously competed at the 2024 Paris Olympics, underlining how far they had come.

“The team brought together runners who had been forced from their homes by conflict and displacement, yet who continued to pursue athletics at the highest level.”

Their participation is made possible by the Refugee Athlete Scholarship programme, which operates under the Olympic Refugee Foundation in close collaboration with World Athletics and its member federations. The programme offers training opportunities and a framework for stability, giving displaced athletes the practical support and security they need to keep competing. Individual journeys illustrate the stakes: Suliman fled Sudan with his family in 2015, lived for years in Egypt and was eventually resettled in Switzerland, taking up running seriously only in 2022 before overcoming a knee injury to reach the Paris Olympics.

For the millions of displaced people watching around the world, the Athlete Refugee Team carries a meaning far larger than results on the track. Each runner stands as a symbol of resilience and possibility, showing that talent and determination can survive even the most disrupted of circumstances, and that sport can offer both a sense of belonging and a stage on which displaced athletes are seen, valued and cheered.