U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 1999 - Iran

Iran continued to host about 1.9 million refugees in 1998, the largest number in refugees of any country in the world. These included, according to the government, 1,400,000 Afghans and 531,000 Iraqis. Neither of these government figures could be independently confirmed, however. Iran has not granted outsiders access to its refugee registration systems and has provided little information on the legal status and rights of refugees and asylum seekers in the country.

Although the government claims that it hosts 32,000 refugees of other nationalities, it has not provided any information about them.

Many Afghan and Iraqi refugees have lived in Iran for nearly two decades. Traditional Iranian hospitality toward them, however, has worn thin. Iran cites its own economic woes – Iranian unemployment stands anywhere from the officially cited rate of 9.1 percent to as high as 25 percent – and lack of international support as reasons for saying that it is time for the refugees to go home. The Iranian unemployment rate was higher in outlying provinces where the refugees were concentrated.

Although the authorities once allowed refugees unrestricted movement within Iran, in recent years, Iran has increasingly restricted refugees to designated residential areas and enclosed camps. In 1998, some 94,000 refugees, both Iraqis (about 56,000) and Afghans (about 38,000), lived in 30 government-run refugee camps.

During the year, more than 9,000 Iraqi refugees and about 14,100 Afghan refugees voluntarily repatriated. There were strong indications, however, that Iranian authorities increasingly resorted to pushing back and forcibly repatriating both Iraqis and Afghans during the year.

Few refugees in Iran resettled to third countries in 1998. By year's end, only 40 Iraqis and 8 Afghans had been resettled, mostly on the basis of family reunification or other humanitarian grounds.

Afghan Refugees

Iranian tolerance for hosting the huge Afghan refugee population, in some case, for two decades, reached a new low in 1998, as mobs attacked, and in some cases killed, Afghan refugees, and demanded their deportation. Tensions mounted in August when persons associated with Afghanistan's Taliban militia (called renegades by the Taliban) seized the Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif and killed nine Iranian diplomats.

In September, Iran massed 270,000 troops along the border, and the two countries came to the brink of war. According to unconfirmed press reports, mobs in Esfahan and Mashhad attacked Afghan refugees in September, killing 47. Their bodies were reportedly returned to Farah and Nimroze provinces in Afghanistan.

Despite the less than warm welcome, Afghan refugees, particularly from Hazarajat Province, continued to arrive, the largest number coming after the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif and Bamian. Because the government declined to register them, their numbers were unclear. However, the Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) clinic in Mashhad found that more than 50 percent of its caseload were new arrivals. The Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrant Affairs (BAFIA), the Ministry of Interior's refugee agency, did transfer some hundreds of new, undocumented Afghan arrivals to the Niatak camp, in Sistan-Baluchistan, home to about 7,000 refugees.

Iran has not carried out a detailed census of the 1.4 million Afghan refugee population, and refugee statistics in Iran cannot be independently confirmed. Demographic information provided by BAFIA is dated. Although BAFIA has reported that 34 percent of Afghan refugees in Iran are ethnic Pushtuns, 27 percent Tajiks, 19 percent Hazaras, and 20 percent Uzbeks, Baluchis, and other ethnic groups, these figures do not reflect the higher rate of repatriation among Pushtuns and the new influxes of Hazaras and other Afghan minorities.

According to BAFIA, Afghan refugees are concentrated in two eastern provinces: Khorasan, with 390,000 refugees, and Sistan Baluchistan, with 400,000.

In those two provinces, 51 percent of the Afghan refugees are permanent card holders, generally a status reserved for refugees who fled Afghanistan during the 1980s, and 49 percent are undocumented or temporary card holders.

The permanent cards, known as "blue cards," for Afghans, do not use the word for "refugees," panahandegan, but rather use a term for involuntary migrants, mohageren. Although blue cards indicate recognition and permission to stay legally, the duration of the stay is not specified, and could be revoked at any time. Blue card holders were once entitled to subsidized health care and free primary and secondary education, but Iran has seriously restricted benefits in recent years. Since the withdrawal of food subsidies in 1995, economic conditions for blue card holders have deteriorated. Blue card holders were still eligible for repatriation assistance in 1998. In some cases, however, the authorities have taken away blue cards.

The other 49 percent of Afghans in Khorasan and Sistan-Baluchistan are either undocumented or hold temporary registration cards. The Iranian authorities started issuing temporary registration cards to undocumented Afghans in 1993 as a way to register them for repatriation.

Nearly 550,000 Afghans, mostly persons who entered in the 1990s, received temporary registration cards, giving them temporary legal status, but putting them on a track for repatriation. Between 1993 and 1995, the majority did, in fact, repatriate, but the uncertainty about conditions in Afghanistan caused many temporary registration card holders to remain longer than anticipated.

Also, continuing unrest in Afghanistan caused former refugees who had repatriated to seek asylum in Iran again, and to create new arrivals as well. In either case, the Iranian authorities declined to register the new arrivals, despite strong prima facie claims to refugee status. They remained undocumented, however, living a marginalized existence in constant fear of deportation, without the right to work, to receive medical services, or to send their children to school.

Although the authorities had declared the temporary registration cards invalid, meaning that most of those who had not repatriated were considered illegal aliens and subject to deportation, in November the government agreed to a voluntary repatriation program in cooperation with UNHCR. The program would entitle undocumented and temporary registration card holders to a repatriation assistance package if they voluntarily returned.

A relative few Afghans hold employment identity cards issued by the Ministry of Labor. These documents predicate the right to residence on holding a job. Work authorization cards do not bear an expiration date. The number of employment identity cards issued in 1998 continued the steep decline of previous years. In the first nine months of 1998, the Ministry of Labor issued 7,885 cards to foreigners (down from 18,400 in 1993), but Afghans, by far the largest group of foreign nationals in the country, received only 4.2 percent of the cards issued, the lowest percentage of any nationality.

There are no available estimates of the number of undocumented Afghans in Iran. Among the undocumented are persons Iran once recognized as refugees or who had some other legal status that has since expired. Generally, all new arrivals from Afghanistan are undocumented. Among them are persons who travel back and forth across the border depending on economic or political circumstances on either side. These include many fleeing from Hazarajat Province. This impoverished, predominantly Shi'a area of central Afghanistan effectively is under a Taliban-imposed trade embargo that exacerbated already serious food shortages in 1998, causing considerable out-migration. Many of the newer arrivals in Iran are Hazaras and other non-Pushtun minorities, such as Turkomans and Uzbeks, whom the Taliban has considered as enemies and who could have well-founded fears of persecution if returned.

Afghan Refugee Health and Welfare

Relatively few of the Afghan refugees receive assistance. A study of Afghan refugee conditions in Sistan-Baluchistan Province found a 60 percent malnutrition rate among refugee children. The MSF clinic in Mashhad reported that 40 percent of patients had respiratory problems. The clinic cared for twice as many women as men. In April, the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, approved a bill prohibiting female patients from being treated by male doctors, despite protests from Iranian medical associations that the country lacked enough female doctors to meet the women's medical needs.

For most Afghans, jobs are limited to low-wage, manual day labor, often in the construction industry. Afghans are barred from owning their own businesses or from working as street vendors. Households headed by women or elderly men often have severely limited earning potential, and are more deeply impoverished than families headed by able-bodied men. Undocumented Afghan men, who at best have only found work as day laborers, often remained in seclusion during the year, fearing arrest and deportation.

To survive, their wives and children had to make ends meet, often at very low wages under extremely poor conditions. Afghan women's income usually came from piece work, such as wool cleaning or embroidery, that could be performed at home. Children were employed in workshops, working for long hours at low wages weaving carpets, making bricks, tanning leather, or similar work.

In addition to blaming Afghans for competing for scarce jobs, some Iranian politicians blamed Afghans for a host of other social ills. Among the most sensitive complaints was that of "illegal marriages." In order for an Iranian woman to marry an Afghan man, she must first obtain permission from the Ministry of Interior. It is extremely rare for the ministry to grant such permission. Nevertheless, Iranian officials estimate that there are about 50,000 illegal marriages. If the marriages were recognized, the Iranian women would lose their Iranian citizenship; however, no legal mechanism exists on the Afghan side of the border for formal recognition of such marriages.

Afghan Repatriation

Information about Afghan repatriation, both the numbers of people involved and the voluntariness of return, are very difficult to assess in Iran. In May 1998, the director-general of BAFIA told an Iranian newspaper that 60,000 Afghan refugees had repatriated in 1997, far more than the 2,233 voluntary repatriates listed by UNHCR for the year. (In last year's World Refugee Survey, USCR reported 4,000 involuntary returns from Iran to Afghanistan, based largely on fragmentary press reports, but said that USCR "believes that the number of Afghans forcibly returned was substantially higher.") Nevertheless, it is also likely that some number of Afghans who did not register for assisted voluntarily repatriation also returned spontaneously and voluntarily.

In early November 1998, the BAFIA director-general said that 30,000 Afghans had repatriated since the end of March 1998, although he did not mention the voluntariness of those returns. This number far exceeded the 1,600 Afghans who voluntarily repatriated with UNHCR's assistance in the first ten months of the year.

On October 31, the BAFIA director-general, citing the strain of "temporary guests" on the Iranian economy, announced that all Afghans in Iran illegally had to leave Iran by November 21.

In November, UNHCR and IOM started a repatriation program for Afghans, especially targeting those not registered by the government. Undocumented Afghans were offered the full repatriation assistance package for registered refugees, including 50 kilos of wheat (120 pounds), blankets, and cash (the equivalent of $40).

UNHCR interviewed candidates for repatriation in Mashhad to assess the voluntariness of their decision to return. At the same time, however, the authorities stepped up deportations of Afghans regarded as illegal aliens. The government's deportation campaign ran parallel to the IOM/UNHCR repatriation program. In Khorasan Province, for example, which borders Afghanistan, police reportedly conducted round ups of undocumented Afghan residents in November and December. Deportees included not only single undocumented Afghan men, but family groups originating in Hazarajat Province as well.

UNHCR suspended its involvement in the repatriation program in December, citing Ramadan, the onset of winter, lack of funds to assist returnees, the lack of a UNHCR monitoring presence in Afghanistan, and Iran's continuing deportation policy. From the beginning of the program in November until the December 21 suspension, 12,512 Afghans voluntarily repatriated (6,189 in November; 6,323 in December), bringing to more than 14,000 the number who voluntarily repatriated with assistance during the year.

At year's end, World Food Program (WFP) officials reported that about 400 Afghan returnees per day were still crossing back into Herat Province with no assistance to return to their places of origin.

At year's end, the governor of Khorasan Province said that 95,000 Afghans living there had repatriated in 1998 (giving no indication how many voluntarily returned and how many were deported). The Mine Awareness Program of the Ansar Relief Institute (ARI) reported that 134,868 Afghans returned in 1998. Neither of these figures can serve as a definitive repatriation count. Not all returnees participated in the mine awareness program, suggesting that the number could well be higher than the nearly 135,000 recorded by ARI, and the 95,000 figure cited by the governor of Khorasan might not include repatriation from other provinces, such as Sistan-Baluchistan. In any case, neither of these numbers suggests the proportion who were deported versus those who returned voluntarily.

Estimating involuntary returns is even more difficult. Some refugees have told nongovernmental organizations that they "chose" organized repatriation, even though they still fear persecution in Afghanistan, to avoid being arrested on the street, possibly separated from their families, and deported with no chance to arrange their affairs.

Between February and December 1998, UNHCR conducted a survey of 3,040 returnee families inside Afghanistan, representing 17,151 persons. The survey found that 25 percent of the returnees to western Afghanistan (the most likely group to have returned from Iran) said that they were forcibly returned.

It is likely that the percentage of forced returns was higher in 1998 than in previous years, and that this is not reflected in the survey. However, as a basis for forming a rough estimate of forced returns, applying the 25 percent finding from the survey to the 135,000 returns recorded as part of the mine awareness training suggests that at least 34,000 of the returns in 1998 were involuntary, and that the true number of involuntary returns is likely much higher.

Even though tens of thousands of persons were deported to Afghanistan, it is impossible to judge how many of the involuntary returnees were refugees. USCR nevertheless notes that screening procedures to determine refugee status for persons facing deportation were inadequate and that in 1998, Iranian officials did not give Afghan asylum seekers an opportunity to present their claims or to receive refugee status.

Refugees from Iraq

Most of the 530,000 Iraqi refugees in Iran carry green cards, which are essentially the same as the blue cards issued to Afghan refugees. A few Iraqi refugees, including those who arrived in the pre-revolutionary period before 1980, carry an actual refugee document, the white card, which uses the proper word for refugees, panahandegan. The white card, actually a booklet, in some respects provides greater rights and benefits than the green cards, including exemption from taxes, the right to work, and to obtain Convention travel documents, but it also requires its holders to renew their status every three months and to report movement and residence to the authorities. Since the Islamic revolution, the government has continued to issue white cards irregularly, mostly to highly educated individuals and established professionals, including a few Afghans.

Government restrictions on work authorization affected Iraqi green card holders during the year. Although long-term Iraqi refugees in Iran had largely achieved economic self-sufficiency, the authorities strictly enforced labor regulations in 1998, rendering many previously employed refugees jobless.

Kurdish Iraqi refugees in Iran who were Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) members or sympathizers became increasingly vulnerable during the year because Iran backed the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in northern Iraq. In March, Iranian security officials arrested 20 KDP members and charged them with being spies. In at least one case, the authorities raided a refugee camp, the Ziveh camp, to make arrests. One of the refugees reportedly died in detention.

The arrests troubled KDP-affiliated refugees, and led larger numbers than expected to seek repatriation. In the first half of 1998, 5,661 Iraqis voluntarily repatriated with UNHCR assistance, all returning to Kurdish controlled northern Iraq. In July, UNHCR suspended the repatriation program after the Iraqi government demanded that it receive lists of returnees and that all repatriates to northern Iraq pass through government controls before heading on to the Kurdish-controlled region. In the last half of 1998, 3,571 Iraqis voluntarily returned to northern Iraq; the number of returnees dropped considerably in the last quarter.

Nevertheless, groups of Iraqi refugees continued to return directly and spontaneously to northern Iraq during the year. As 1998 ended, Iranian press accounts said that a final group of about 100 Iraqi Kurds, 20 families, repatriated via the Haj Omran crossing point into Iraqi Kurdistan.

About 350,000 of the estimated 580,000 Iraqi refugees in Iran were expelled from Iraq at the time of the Iraq-Iran War because of their suspected Iranian origin, and have lived in the western region of Iran for almost two decades. In many cases, both Iran and Iraq dispute their citizenship, in effect rendering many of them stateless. Those people who were able to prove their family links to Iran have been granted Iranian citizenship, and the remainder have been issued green cards. In practice, the Iranian authorities make no distinctions among Iraqi refugees, whether or not Iraq acknowledges their citizenship. The population also includes an estimated 70,000 Shi'a Arabs who over the years have mostly fled from the southern Iraqi marshlands to Iran. Iraqi refugees continued to arrive in southern Khuzestan Province in 1998. Local NGOs estimated that about three to four families arrived per day.

Another 2,836 Iraqi refugees have been resettled in Iran from the Rafha camp in Saudi Arabia, including 191 in 1998. In August when a group of 55 arrived from the Rafha camp, Iranian authorities announced that more refugees would be arriving from Rafha, and that they would be accommodated at the Ibrahimabad camp in Arak, which would take up to 3,500 of them.

Saudi Arabia reportedly has agreed to pay the transport costs to fly the refugees to Iran. These Shi'a Arabs are among the 33,000 refugees hosted by Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.

The Iraqi refugees from Rafha are issued the same green cards as other Iraqi refugees. The Ibrahimabad camp held about 2,500 Iraqi refugees a the end of 1998, although most did not come to Iran via the Rafha camp in Saudi Arabia.

Internal Displacement

The extent of internal displacement in Kurdish areas is unknown. Human Rights Watch reported in 1997 that more than 271 villages were destroyed and depopulated between 1980 and 1992, and that another 113 villages were bombed in the last six months of 1993. Some expelled villagers have reportedly not been able to return, in part because of landmines sown widely at the site of former villages.

Iraqi POWs

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stepped up its efforts in 1998 to resolve the fate of POWs captured in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. In April, the ICRC supervised the first major exchange of POWs since 1990, involving the return of 5,584 Iraqis and 316 Iranians. The ICRC indicated that some Iraqi POWs expressed a fear of persecution and were not returned. In August, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said that Iraqi POWs who expressed a desire to return could go home, and that Iran would accept the remainder as refugees. On December 16, Iran sent home another group of 196 Iraqi and 16 non-Iraqi POWs who had served with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. An ICRC spokesperson said that all the returns were voluntary.

Other Refugees

Although the government claims to host more than 30,000 refugees of other nationalities, including Tajiks, Bosnians, Azeris, Eritreans, Somalis, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, it has provided no information about them or allowed UNHCR or other organizations access to them. In January 1998, Iran reported that a group of 87 ethnic Kazakhs who had fled to Iran in the 1930s repatriated to Kazakhstan.

Other Developments

Despite the 1997 election of moderate Mohammad Khatami as president, and his call for Iranian exiles to return, political killings and other human rights abuses continued in 1998. Although President Khatami said in September that Iran would not pursue the fatwa to kill novelist Salman Rushdie (a statement that resulted in renewed diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom), the reward for his death appeared still to be in place at year's end.

Refugees abroad kept a close eye on the repression of dissident intellectuals and religious minorities inside Iran, an apparent consequence of the internal power struggle between the newly elected president and hard-line elements. Such abuses included the hanging of a Jewish community leader, Kakhodah-Zadeh, allegedly for helping Jews leave Iran, although the charges were never made public.

Also, in October, Iran cracked down on an unofficial Baha'i university operating out of private homes. The banned Baha'is had created the university to serve Baha'i faculty and students expelled from other schools of higher learning. Thirty-six Baha'i teachers in fourteen cities throughout Iran were arrested in October, and about 500 Baha'i homes were ransacked.

In July, a Baha'i businessman, Ruhollah Rowhani, was executed after being charged with converting a Muslim woman to the Baha'i faith – a charge she denied. He was denied any legal representation. In October, two other Baha'is were sentenced to death.

A Sunni prayer leader was also the victim of a political murder.

A spate of political murders occurred in November: a prominent intellectual secularist and his wife were stabbed to death in their home; two other secular writers were kidnapped and murdered; another died under mysterious circumstances.

(In early January 1999, persons employed by the Ministry of Intelligence were arrested and charged in the killings.)