Parfait Hakizimana

Parfait Hakizimana (born 1988) is a Burundian parataekwondo practitioner who currently resides in Rwanda. He represented the Refugee Paralympic Team at the 2020 Summer Paralympics in the under 61 kg category.

Life Hakizimana was born in Burundi and lived in a settlement camp as a child. He was shot in the arm when he was eight in an attack that also killed his mother. His father took him to a hospital where with basic care he recovered over two years. He began learning taekwondo when he was sixteen. Hakizimana credits the sport with improving his outlook. He set up a martial arts club. When he was twenty his father died on a motorbike and he decided to leave the tribal conflict in Burundi.

He began to compete in 2017 and he had some success. Zura Mushambokazi became his coach. She is a national Taekwondo coach. In 2021 he was able to travel to Kigali where he trained at the Amahoro Stadium. The other five are Alia Issa and Ibrahim Al Hussein who are both from Syria and are based in Athens, the American-based Afghan refugee swimmer Abbas Karimi, the German-based Syrian refugee canoeist Anas Al Khalifa, and American based Iranian refugee discus thrower Shahrad Nasajpour.