The IOC said that the newly formed refugee team competing at this year's Olympics "was one of the highlights in Rio de Janeiro but it is not clear if it will compete at the 2020 Games in Tokyo," according to Karolos Grohmann of REUTERS. The IOC unveiled its first team of refugees in June "in an effort to raise awareness of the issue and it was one of the feel-good stories of the Rio Olympics." But it has "yet to decide whether to send another refugee team to Tokyo in four years time." IOC Deputy Dir General for Relations with the Olympic Movement Pere Miro said, "We will see. The team in Rio was to remind the world of the situation (of refugees). (For Tokyo) this has not yet been decided. To have a team in Rio was not an objective in itself but a means to put this problem to the world. We will now go step by step." The 10-member refugee team, hand-picked by the IOC, "hogged the spotlight after marching as the penultimate team before hosts Brazil in the Opening Ceremony." More than a million refugees "streamed into Europe in the past year alone as they fled fighting in Syria and other countries" (REUTERS, 12/6).
