From athlete to “high-profile UNHCR” collaborator to support refugees in Costa Rica

Costa Rica’s most awarded boxer, Hanna Gabriels, is very critical of the xenophobic acts suffered by some refugees in her country. “They are prejudices”, she says, and she remembers that on one occasion she carried out a collection for a group of people who were in vulnerable conditions and then received messages with hints of discrimination.

“I remember when we were once helping a family, some people expressed themselves very ugly. They told them why we raised their lives, that what these people should do is work. In very terrible ways, people do not think when they are behind from the phone and the computer.

Among the offenses that marked her the most, one stands out. “They told me ‘what you have to give these people is contraceptive methods; you have to put them to work so they don’t become homeless.'”

But that doesn’t stop her from her goal of raising awareness and helping social causes. “You really realize the lack of empathy there is and I remember saying the following to a person who expressed himself so ugly: —I hope you have to flee your country and run into people like you, so that you see the great blessing and what a great joy it is to run into people like me”.

Hanna Gabriels, is the world heavyweight and light heavyweight champion of the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council, and for about four years she began working as a high-profile collaborator with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. .

Gabriels assures that from her platform as a world champion she allows “a lot of access to people” and with the UNHCR she collaborates in the activities in which they consider her suitable.

“In these various activities that UNHCR has coordinated, I assist them, I help them with the issue of communication and, mainly, that all the negative things that we can see in other people from other countries are the same that we are going to find in our own country. , only sometimes we tend to put a name and color and nationality on it.”

In July 2019, Hanna dedicated her world championship defense to refugees in Costa Rica. She later made a statement in which he called to join the fight against xenophobia.

“Each fight has been difficult, but the most difficult has not been in a ring, but in the streets and against indifference. Many people have been forced to leave their countries to save their lives and have found refuge in our country. However, they too have been struck by indifference,” he said then.

Entrepreneur and trainer

Gabriels, 40, a Costa Rican national, is also a self-defense instructor for girls and women at a gym she owns in San José, where she spends a good part of her time serving her clients.

From the age of five he began his life as an athlete, as he recalls. He has visited Nicaragua, where he has great friends. She says that that country has marked her because she became world champion there in 2009.

“In my country, even back then, boxing was not supported so much and I was the first world champion in Costa Rica, but I became a champion in Nicaragua. It is a country that I love very much because of the way they have always received me. It has been always reciprocal. I don’t understand people who see it differently,” he says.

Now she is amazed at the fact that there are thousands of Nicaraguans seeking refuge in their country. She remembers that episode when she was a champion and assures that she “empowers” them to get ahead.

“I have always said that they are sister countries (Nicaragua and Costa Rica). Besides, I really enjoy sharing with people.”

According to UNHCR data, Costa Rica had at least 129,500 new refugee applications, the majority of people from Nicaragua.

In this sense, Hanna says that the challenges continue due to xenophobia in Costa Rica “I really believe that, mainly, we have to first get rid of the double standard of believing that because we have a nationality we become the exclusive owners of a place, of what we whatever. We are citizens of the world. We should be able to freely move from place to place, meet people, give each other the opportunity to give and receive the best of each other,” says Hanna.

“In an ideal world, this would be like this. We need a little more empathy, which is sometimes only achieved by living through hard things,” he concludes.

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