Patric Bettembourg from Sweden will coach and manage the team of four women and three men, who are originally from Iran, Brazil, Cuba, Cameroon and Yemen and whose ages range from 23 to 32.

They are now refugees living in the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Saudi Arabia.

The team has come into existence only six months after the idea was first raised at an IWF Board meeting, and will compete at this year's IWF World Championships in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in September.

It is completely separate from the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) refugee team.

Bettembourg, 52, is the son of the multiple world record holder and 1972 Olympic bronze medallist Hans Bettembourg, who was born in Germany and lifted for Sweden.

He is the national youth and junior coach for Sweden, has worked with refugees before, and said: "This project should be really exciting.

"It's a combination of working in elite weightlifting and working with refugees - a new experience and one I really want to be involved with."

Bettembourg will be in familiar surroundings when the team meet for the first time together in Halmstad, Sweden, in June.

They will usually train where they are living but will gather for a 10-day training camp sponsored and hosted by Eleiko, the equipment manufacturer whose elite training centre in Halmstad is the headquarters for Sweden's senior national team.

The two Brazilians, both living in the United States, are 23-year-old Aline de Souza and 30-year-old Monique Lima.

De Souza was a silver medallist at the IWF World Youth Championships in 2015, the year when she was also youth, junior and senior South American champion at 48kg.

Lima, who like de Souza has not competed internationally for more than seven years, was a Pan American junior medallist in 2012 and was the 2015 South American Championships winner in the old 75kg category.

The Iranians are Parisa Jahanfekrian, who qualified for the Tokyo Olympic Games at 87kg but was not allowed to compete after criticising her national federation, and the male super-heavyweight Reza Rouhi.

Rouhi, 28, does not appear on the IWF results database but won non-IWF events and totalled 398kg at a competition in Turkey in 2014.

Jahanfekrian, also 28, lives in Germany and Rouhi in Britain.

"I am really happy about being selected, that finally I have a team and will be able to lift in competitions again," said Jahanfekrian, who last competed in December 2019.

Clementine Meukeugni won a Commonwealth Games bronze for Cameroon in 2018 at 87kg and had a 10-year career before she tried to find a new life in France. 

Addriel Garcia, 30, last competed for Cuba in 2019 and now lives in Italy.

He was a Pan American junior champion who lifted at the IWF World Championships three times between 2014 and 2018.

Fawaz Mohammed Saleh Hussain, a 32-year-old from Yemen who lives in Saudi Arabia, does not have a results record on the IWF database.

Florian Sperl and Attila Adamfi, an IWF Board member and vice-president, met Bettembourg this week to discuss plans, which could include a visit to a refugee camp in Turkey to promote the team and offer coaching in weightlifting.

"We want to give everybody the chance to compete in the World Championships," said Sperl, who gave special thanks to Eleiko and the Saudi Arabian Weightlifting Federation for their support.

Eleiko is sponsoring the training camp and the Saudi Federation, led by IWF Board member Mohamed Alharbi, will cover the costs of the team's participation in the World Championships.

"I have very good feedback about this project from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and from our own national federations," Sperl said.

Sperl, President of the German Weightlifting Federation, is also working on a sustainability project - recommended by the IOC - after the IWF became a signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The aim is to reduce the carbon footprint of the IWF by 50 per cent by 2030 against a comprehensive baseline that will be agreed after consultation with environmental professionals.

"These projects are both very important for our sport's future," said Sperl.

"If we want to get back on the Olympic Games programme for 2028 we have to make changes."