Paris 2024 Olympic Games: from Ukraine to Gaza, geopolitics looms large less than a month before the opening ceremony

Thomas Bach still dreams of “bringing the world together” in Paris. MAXPPP – MARTIAL TREZZINI

Concerned about "bringing the world together", the IOC avoided boycotts and exclusions to bring together delegations from all over the world to the Paris Olympics, but it must still manage to make the event a peaceful bubble.

At a time when all "political propaganda" is prohibited by the Olympic Charter on the field or podiums, but allowed in the Olympic Village and during press conferences, can the Games be overtaken by ongoing conflicts, notably the wars in Ukraine and Gaza ?

Russians "neutral" and scrutinized

The Russian invasion of Ukraine with the support of Belarus, in February 2022, has long seemed to rule out any possibility of having athletes of three nationalities coexist in Paris: Russians and Belarusians were banned from world sport until March 2023, and Ukrainians threatened to boycott the Games if they participated.

But once this position was abandoned by kyiv, in the summer of 2023, the IOC orchestrated a gradual reintegration of Russians and Belarusians into international competitions, under strict conditions: on an individual basis, under a neutral flag, and as long as they did not "actively support the war in Ukraine" and are not under contract with the military or security agencies.

The body, which also prohibited them from parading on the Seine during the opening ceremony, has so far validated the qualification of 28 Russians and 19 Belarusians under a neutral banner, a list for currently limited to nine disciplines (wrestling, trampoline, cycling, weightlifting, shooting, tennis, rowing, judo and canoeing) and is expected to be completed.

In any case, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the 330 Russians and 104 Belarusians at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. And these "neutral athletes" are promised permanent surveillance: any demonstration of support for the offensive in Ukraine, by example a "Z" symbol of the invasion, would result in a procedure which could go "up to immediate exclusion from the Games", warned at the end of April the head of the IOC, Thomas Bach, to the AFP.

Palestinians want a platform

Since the fall, the IOC has been trying to stay away from the war between Israel and Hamas by hiding behind its "two-state solution& ;quot;, since the Israeli and Palestinian National Olympic Committees (NOCs) have coexisted since 1995, a legacy of the Oslo peace process. He therefore never considered having Israeli athletes compete under a neutral banner, although the Israeli bombings in retaliation for the bloody attack of October 7 perpetrated by Hamas destroyed the main sporting institutions of Gaza and killed personalities from the Palestinian sports community, according to the Palestinian Olympic Committee.

The body, which should have, according to the IOC, "six to eight representatives" through the use of invitations, nevertheless intends to make the Olympics a platform. "Paris, it’s a historic and important moment to tell the world […] : enough, too much it’is too much", declared its president, Jibril Rajoub, in mid-June. On the Israeli side, the issue is above all security, as at each Olympic edition since the deadly hostage taking in Munich in 1972: for the moment, the delegation plans "to participate in the opening ceremony like any other team", according to its Olympic committee.

Afghanistan without the Taliban

The return of the Taliban to power in Kabul in the summer of 2021 has left sports authorities facing a dilemma: how to balance dialogue and pressure to help athletes and their entourage, whether in exile or remaining in the country, without endorsing the ban on women's sport?

In mid-June, the IOC announced that it had obtained the presence in Paris of an Afghan team of three men (in athletics, swimming and judo) and three women (athletics and cycling), without revealing their identities. All of them live abroad, except the judoka, the director general of the Afghan Olympic Committee, Dad Mohammad Payenda Akhtari, later clarified.

“As women's sports are suspended in Afghanistan”, the three women “were not sent from the country”, he explained. The echo that will be given to their performances remains one of the unknowns of the Games, especially since the IOC intended in mid-June to “send to the world and to Afghanistan a very strong symbol”, according to its spokesperson Mark Adams.

Afghanistan, which has the third largest contingent of exiles in the world, will also have five representatives in the Refugee Olympic Team including its captain, cyclist Masomah Ali Zada. The young woman plans to go and encourage her compatriots under the Afghan flag: “I am so happy that there are three Afghan women at the Olympics and that they are on an equal footing with the men”, she recently confided to AFP.