Eliud Kipchoge addresses Refugee Olympic Team for 2026 Dakar Youth Olympic Games during a mentorship session (© Stephen Rutto)
When athletics gets under way on 8 November at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, four members of the first Refugee Olympic Team to compete at the event will line up aiming for more than medals.
They are part of a six-strong team representing a global refugee population of more than 41 million and, for the young athletes involved, Dakar represents an opportunity to pursue sporting ambitions while opening new pathways beyond competition.
Since late August, the four track athletes have prepared at the Complete Sports Athletics Training Centre in Kaptagat, Kenya, alongside judoka Arno Yfunga and taekwondo athlete Lourance Namukiza.
Selected from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya and refugee settlements in Uganda, the athletes spent their final weeks preparing at more than 2400m above sea level in Kenya’s Rift Valley.
Dakar 2026, the first Youth Olympic Games staged in Africa, now gives them the chance to make history.
Nyataba Gatloth, a 17-year-old 800m athlete who arrived in Kakuma in 2022, hopes to win a medal in Dakar.
Her preparations have combined education with training under coach Joseph Longok in Kakuma and, more recently, the more intensive programme in Kaptagat, where she met head coach and 2007 world 800m champion Janeth Jepkosgei.
For Gatloth, success would also provide inspiration for other young athletes in Kakuma.
Another 800m athlete, Clement Niyomuhoza, who is originally from Burundi, considers his selection for Dakar a life-changing opportunity.
“I didn’t imagine I would be selected to represent refugee athletes in Dakar. This has shown me and other boys in Kakuma that hard work can take us to places that we have never dreamt about. I want them to develop interest in and love the sport because they are talented,” says Niyomuhoza.
Rashid Roshain (left) joins other sprinters for a jog in Kaptagat (© Stephen Rutto)
Rachid Rochene, a 200m sprinter, arrived in Uganda with his mother and siblings in 2014 after his family fled fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The 16-year-old, whose talent was spotted while training in Uganda, hopes Dakar will be the start of further opportunities on and off the track.
A meeting in Kaptagat with refugee team mentor and two-time Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge provided further inspiration.
“In Dakar, I want to run a good time and achieve a medal,” says Rochene. “I like Usain Bolt. Whenever I see him, I see myself. I want to break records. His style of sprinting and his achievements inspire me a lot.”
Like Rochene, 200m sprinter Florence Masumbe is based in Uganda after her family fled the DRC when she was a baby.
“I believe that I can perform well in Dakar. I want to prove that refugees are talented and can make history. I want to run 27 seconds in the 200m,” she says.
Longok believes the refugee athletics programme is already having an impact beyond competition. He says girls now make up 70% of refugees enrolled in sports programmes at Kakuma.
Kipchoge, who has mentored the refugee programme since 2023, says much of his role is about helping the young athletes believe they have the same potential as their peers.
“Having their own space in Dakar gives them more power and is a show of respect,” he says. “Athletes who fly their nations’ colours are proud of their country, but those who carry the refugee flag have a huge challenge.
“I tell them that you are part of the global community. It is my happiness to succeed in changing their minds, to start believing in themselves and to know that they have the same potential and opportunities as other athletes.”
Lourance Namukiza, Clement Niyomuhoza, Rashid Roshain, Nyataba Kuek and Florence Masumbe with Eliud Kipchoge (© Stephen Rutto)
World Athletics, the Olympic Refuge Foundation, UNHCR and the National Olympic Committees and athletics federations of Kenya and Uganda have worked together to support the athletes’ development.
Alice Annibali, World Athletics Senior Manager for Athletics for a Better World, says moving the athletes from the hot conditions of Kakuma and western Uganda to high-altitude Kaptagat provided them with an ideal final preparation camp.
“With our consolidated efforts through sport and education, we are changing mindsets one step at a time and always in the best interests of our refugee athletes,” Annibali says.
World Athletics’ U20 refugee programme was launched as a pilot in 2022 and has since expanded from Kenya into Uganda. Its work has been strengthened this year by a Memorandum of Understanding between World Athletics and UNHCR, aimed at expanding opportunities for refugee athletes and communities.
Few people understand the potential impact of those opportunities better than Yiech Pur Biel, Chef de Mission of the Refugee Olympic Team in Dakar.
Originally from South Sudan, Biel spent much of his childhood in Kakuma Refugee Camp before competing in the 800m for the inaugural Refugee Olympic Team at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. He later became a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and IOC member and now sits on the board of the Olympic Refuge Foundation.
The pathway that took Biel from Kakuma to the Olympic stage is one the young athletes in Dakar now hope to follow.
Their participation also forms part of World Athletics’ latest commitment under the Joint Sport Pledge, reaffirmed at the Global Refugee Forum Progress Review in Geneva in December 2025, to provide refugee athletes with competition, training, education and safeguarding opportunities.
For Kipchoge, the message to the team is simple.
“We are one and we have no other world. This is our home, and let us promote the values of Olympic solidarity.”
Stephen Rutto for World Athletics
