The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and has 20,305 staff working in 136 countries as of December 2023.
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In this Dossier
United Nations Refugee Agency in the context of Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Summer Olympics
The Refugee Olympic Team competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016, as independent Olympic participants.
In March 2016, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach declared that the IOC would choose five to ten refugees to compete at the 2016 Summer Olympics, in the context of the "worldwide refugee crisis", of which the European migrant crisis is a prominent part. Additionally, as part of an effort "to show solidarity with the world's refugees", the United Nations Refugee Agency selected Ibrahim Al-Hussein, a Syrian refugee residing in Athens, Greece, to carry the Olympic flame through the Eleonas refugee and migrant camp in the city as part of the 2016 torch relay.