The International Weightlifting Federation -IWF- has announced the composition of its 2026 Refugee Team, made up of Ramiro Mora, Clémentine Noumbissi and Fatemah Keshavarz. All three weightlifters are based in Great Britain, are part of the International Olympic Committee -IOC- refugee athlete scholarship programme and will be invited to compete at the IWF World Championships, which will take place in Ningbo, China, from 27 October to 8 November.
The announcement confirms a new stage for a project launched by the IWF in 2023 and one that has already started to build its own place within international weightlifting. Aline de Souza became the federation’s first refugee athlete to compete at a World Championships, in Riyadh 2023, while Yekta Jamali became the first IWF refugee weightlifter to win a medal, claiming bronze at the 2024 IWF World Junior Championships.
Ramiro Mora, from Cuba to the Olympic stage
Ramiro Mora will be the most internationally experienced name in the team. Born in Cuba in September 1997, he was part of the Olympic Refugee Team at the Paris 2024 Games and finished seventh in the men’s 102kg category. His total of 376kg, with 166kg in the snatch and 210kg in the clean and jerk, clearly improved the mark he had produced months earlier at the IWF World Cup in Phuket, where he lifted 359kg.
His story, however, cannot be understood only from the platform. Mora left Cuba in 2019 as part of an English circus and worked as a trapeze artist in Blackpool, before applying for political asylum in the United Kingdom after taking part in a protest in London. Through that process, weightlifting once again became a way to rebuild routine, competitive identity and sporting future. In December 2024, he competed at the World Championships in Manama in the 96kg category and finished 10th with 369kg. In 2025, at the IWF event in Forde, Norway, he was ninth in 94kg.
Noumbissi and Keshavarz, two different paths to the same team
Clémentine Noumbissi brings to the group a career built over years at African and international level. Born in October 1990, she represented Cameroon until 2022 and achieved significant results before joining the IWF programme: she was African champion in 2021, gold medallist at the 2019 African Games and bronze medallist at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. She also competed at the Tokyo 2020 Games, where she finished 11th in the women’s 87kg category.
Her move into the refugee athlete pathway opens a second stage in a career that had already included Olympic and continental experience. Noumbissi was already part of the IWF Refugee Team in 2025 and competed at the World Championships held in Norway, where she finished 20th in the 86kg category. Her continuity in 2026 allows her to sustain a career that has changed competitive framework, but not sporting ambition.
Fatemah Keshavarz, the newcomer
Fatemah Keshavarz is the newcomer in the team and also the youngest member of the group. Born in October 2004, she represented Iran until 2024 and arrived in the programme with important results in development categories. She was Asian junior champion in 2023, silver medallist at the Asian Championships that same year and eighth at the 2024 IWF World Junior Championships in the 71kg category.
Her sporting path began earlier in taekwondo, a discipline in which she reached third dan, before eventually finding in weightlifting a more suitable space to compete at the highest level. Now based in Great Britain, Keshavarz has continued her career despite personal and financial difficulties, integrated into the IOC refugee athlete scholarship programme. Her arrival brings a future-facing element to the team: not only because of her age, but because her career is still being built and the programme can give her a stable structure to keep growing.
The IWF Refugee Team will be led by Damjan Canzek as team manager and will include Hussein Elsettawi as physiotherapist. Ningbo will be its next competitive stop, but also another opportunity to give visibility to a programme that has already moved from institutional presentation to results, with World Championships appearances, Olympic participation and junior podiums.
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