U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 2001 - Iran

Iran continued to host about 1.9 million refugees in 2000, the largest number of refugees in any country in the world. These included about 1,482,000 Afghans, 387,000 Iraqis, and about 26,000 others. The Iranian government claims that another 500,000 undocumented Afghans live in Iran, but does not recognize them as refugees. These government figures could not be independently confirmed, however, and Iran has not carried out a detailed census. The government 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.

About 900, predominantly Afghan, refugees were resettled from Iran to other countries in 2000, mostly to Canada and Scandinavian countries. The priority group for resettlement out of Iran was single Afghan women with children.

There are no accurate estimates of the number of Iranians outside Iran who fear persecution if returned. Many do not formally apply for asylum, but find work or study abroad with or without legal status. Some have been permanently resettled in other countries. About 23,900 Iranian refugees were living in Iraq in 2000. Another 27,000 Iranians sought asylum in Europe in 2000. The largest number lodged asylum applications in Slovenia (5,924), the United Kingdom (5,170), and Germany (4,886).

Political Developments

Despite the 1997 election of moderate Mohammad Khatami as president and the election in 2000 of a predominantly reformist parliament, the Majles, the Iranian government appeared increasingly intolerant of refugees and immigrants, many of whom have lived in Iran for nearly two decades. Citing high unemployment, the government has set several deadlines in the past three years for refugees to leave the country, has generally declined to register new arrivals from Afghanistan and Iraq as refugees, has attempted to round up and confine refugees to camps, and, at times, has deported them summarily.

In April, the new, reformist Majles included in an annex to its five-year development plan a directive to the Interior Ministry to expel all foreigners in the country without work permits whose lives would not be threatened upon return. During the summer, 154 members of the Majles sent President Mohammed Khatami an open letter calling for the repatriation of all Afghans living in Iran.

In 2000, the Iranian Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs (BAFIA), the Ministry of Interior's refugee agency, engaged in a major screening and repatriation exercise for Afghan refugees in cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) through which about 130,000 Afghans voluntarily repatriated and about 80,000 were recognized as refugees and issued temporary residence permits (see Afghan Repatriation/Refugee Screening Program below). However, another 50,000 Afghans repatriated outside the program in circumstances that suggested coercion. In 1999, Iran forcibly returned about 100,000 Afghans.

Despite the ascendancy of political moderates, an intense struggle continued between hard-liners and more moderate elements, resulting in restriction of freedom of expression and other human rights abuses, particularly directed against members of the reformist media, women, and minorities. These actions continued to dissuade many Iranian expatriates from returning and to convince many Iranians to leave.

Religious minorities, whose numbers have dwindled, continued to be particularly vulnerable. In July, a closed court convicted ten Iranian Jews of spying for Israel and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from four to thirteen years. The convictions, and the televised broadcast of some of their confessions on state-run television, caused fear and uncertainty among Iran's small residual Jewish population of about 30,000. Press reports in June quoted the Jewish representative in the Majles (each recognized religious minority has one reserved seat) saying that many Jews were leaving the country and that nearly half were thinking of leaving. In September, an appeals court reduced the sentences of the ten and revised the charges to cooperation with Israel.

In October, the Los Angeles Times reported the story of a prominent member of the Baha'i minority who returned from Saudi Arabia following assurances that he would not be persecuted upon return. According to the report, the 65-year-old man, a doctor, was imprisoned and severely tortured. He escaped to Turkey, joining a large number of Iranian Baha'i asylum seekers in that country. According to the UN Human Rights Commission's special representative on Iran, 11 Baha'is remain jailed in Iran, including 4 facing death sentences.

Among other severe restrictions, Iranian passport applications include questions concerning religion, infringing on the right of Baha'is and other religious minorities to leave the country.

Large but indeterminate numbers of Iranians remained outside Iran in 2000, although relatively few sought or received refugee status. In 2000, the 27,000 Iranians who lodged asylum applications in Europe, excluding Turkey and the former Soviet Union, represented a 125 percent increase from the previous year. Most Iranians left for a combination of political, social, economic, and personal reasons. According to the UN Human Rights Commission's special representative on Iran, about 150,000 Iranian doctors and engineers live in the United States alone. To illustrate the serious brain drain, he reported that 80 percent of the Iranian students who competed in the international science Olympiads in the past three years now live outside the country.

Assistance and Accommodations

Refugees, registered and unregistered, have long occupied the lowest rung of Iran's socio-economic ladder. In the past, refugees were eligible for education, health services, and food rations on a par with Iranian citizens. By the mid-1990s, however, most had lost these benefits.

Only 4.4 percent of Iran's 1.9 million refugees live in camps, and, in the case of Afghans, many of those who have been moved into camps have been placed in them pending their voluntary or involuntary repatriation. At year's end, about 48,000 Iraqis were accommodated in 23 camps and about 36,000 Afghans in 7 camps, mostly clustered in border regions.

In theory, recognized refugees with residence permits have the right to work in Iran, but are restricted mainly to manual labor. In the past, the Iranian authorities often ignored their own labor laws, enabling undocumented Afghans to support themselves. In the past two years, however, the authorities have more strictly enforced labor regulations; refugees have reported that labor officials have sometimes arbitrarily terminated their work permits.

Nevertheless, most refugees, in 2000, did not have work permits at all, but managed to subsist at the margins of the Iranian economy by working without authorization. Iran's accession to the UN Refugee Convention in 1976 included several reservations, including on Article 17, the right to work.

Documented refugee children had the right in 2000 to primary education in the Iranian school system. In part because of problems with documentation, however, the Afghan community in the eastern provinces in recent years established about 20 "private" schools for Afghan children. Until 2000, the Iranian authorities barely tolerated the schools. In 2000, with the initiation of the screening and voluntary repatriation program (see below), the Iranian authorities ordered the schools closed, saying that children of screened-in Afghans would be permitted to attend public schools, and that children of screened-out Afghans would have to repatriate. At year's end, pending the completion of the screening process, several of the Afghan schools in Mashhad remained open under the direct supervision of the Iranian Ministry of Education.

Legal Status

Refugee status in Iran is as precarious as it is ambiguous. Most Afghans who arrived during the 1980s received permanent "blue cards," which do not use the word for "refugees," panahandegan, but rather the term for involuntary migrants, mohageren. Although blue cards indicate recognition and permission to stay legally, they do not specify the duration of the stay, and can 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.

Most 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, a white booklet, which uses the proper word for refugees, panahandegan. The white booklet in some respects provides greater rights and benefits than the green cards, including exemption from taxes, the right to work, and the right to obtain Convention travel documents, but it also requires its holders to renew their status every three months and to report their 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.

A large percentage of Afghan refugees are either undocumented or hold temporary registration cards, which Iranian authorities started issuing 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, a large number did, in fact, repatriate, but 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 led to new arrivals as well. In either case, the Iranian authorities declined to register the new arrivals, despite strong prima facie claims to refugee status. The Afghans remained undocumented, 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 have declared the temporary registration cards issued in the 1990s invalid, meaning that most of those who have not repatriated are considered illegal aliens and subject to deportation, the government allowed temporary registration card holders to register for the protection screening and voluntary repatriation programs in 2000 (see below). Adding to the confusing array of cards and statuses, the joint UNHCR-BAFIA screening and voluntary repatriation introduced yet another temporary residence card, a three-month permit for persons recognized as having protection needs that prevent their return to Afghanistan.

The government also issues a laissez-passer document and, recently, an "alien's passport," specifically for one-way permission to leave Iran.

Afghan Refugees

Afghan refugees are concentrated in two eastern provinces bordering Afghanistan – Khorasan, with an estimated 390,000 refugees, and Sistan-Baluchistan, with about 400,000. Afghans can also be found throughout Iran, in urban centers, as well as in the poor rural areas in eastern Iran. They are often seen on construction sites or performing other manual labor.

Afghan Repatriation/Refugee Screening Program

In April, the Iranian government and UNHCR began a joint repatriation program for Afghan refugees. The "Joint Program" represented an attempt by UNHCR to introduce order and refugee status screening to a process that in recent years had become increasingly arbitrary and coercive. Under this program, Afghans in Iran, regardless of current status or time of arrival, were invited to come forward either to benefit from an assistance package to repatriate voluntarily or to present their claims for the need for protection from return.

UNHCR and BAFIA established nine screening centers to assess Afghan refugee claims. Shortly after opening, however, the authorities closed the Tehran center, citing security reasons. Consequently, significant numbers of Afghans in the Tehran area were not able to participate in the screening opportunity.

Although UNHCR attempted to apply the Refugee Convention standard to the protection screening, BAFIA issued a directive to its examiners identifying particular category groups in need of protection: persons with military background; politically active persons; persons arriving from areas in active conflict; and persons active in the arts and sciences. The directive also instructed examiners to require applicants to certify their claims with other Iranian military and political bureaus, in effect, a pre-screening requirement. The BAFIA directive had the effect of excluding or deterring uneducated applicants from agricultural backgrounds whose claims of persecution were based on religion (being Shi'a) or ethnicity (Hazarahs).

During the nine-month program, the joint screening centers received 49,022 cases, representing about 250,000 persons. By year's end, 14,940 cases, representing about 80,000 people, were recognized as refugees, about 34 percent of the cases decided. At year's end, 3,595 cases were still pending, representing about 20,000 people.

The authorities issued three-month, temporary residence permits to recognized cases. The three-month residence permits may be renewed four times. It is unclear what will happen to temporary permit holders after one year. Temporary permit holders are required to reside in the province where the permits are issued, and travel outside the province is restricted.

Temporary permit holders are not accorded automatic work authorization, but must apply separately for work permits. Rejected claimants had the right to an appeal by another joint UNHCR/BAFIA team, but no information on appeal decisions was available. It was also not reported whether the 29,403 rejected cases, representing roughly 150,000 people, were deported.

In order to gauge the success or failure of the voluntary repatriation and screening program in the last nine months of 2000, it is important to note the recent history of forced Afghan repatriations from Iran. The prior joint UNHCR-BAFIA repatriation program occurred in 1998. At that time, despite UNHCR's involvement in assessing the voluntariness of Afghan returns, the Iranian authorities engaged in a parallel campaign of deporting masses of Afghans regarded as illegal aliens, totaling some 90,000 in 1998. UNHCR suspended its involvement in the repatriation program in December 1998.

For the next year, UNHCR and the Iranian authorities tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a new agreement. In drafting a new repatriation agreement, UNHCR sought to avoid a program of "voluntary" repatriation accompanied by a parallel program of forced repatriation. UNHCR's goal was to institute a genuine refugee-screening program jointly with the government that would assess individual claims and provide protection to persons recognized as refugees, and to avoid rounding up Afghans and confining them in camps.

While noting the difficulty in arriving at accurate estimates, USCR estimated in the World Refugee Survey that the Iranian authorities forcibly repatriated about 100,000 Afghans in 1999 and that about 62,000 voluntarily repatriated that year.

During the first three months of 2000, before the joint repatriation program began, Iranian Revolutionary Guards continued to sweep Afghan-populated areas, arresting Afghans on the street and while riding public transportation, confining them to camps, and deporting them directly to western Afghanistan. Although sweeps mostly caught single men, whole families were reportedly arrested in southern Tehran in March, sent to a camp at Askarabad, and from there bussed to the Nimruz region of western Afghanistan.

Separate from the refugee screening procedure, BAFIA and UNHCR established voluntary repatriation centers in Tehran, Mashhad, and Zaheden to facilitate return of both documented and undocumented Afghans seeking to return. In the course of these organized returns, UNHCR had the opportunity to meet confidentially with the returnees to assess the voluntariness of their decisions. UNHCR sought to avoid returning Afghans to seriously drought-affected areas of Afghanistan or to conflict areas. Some 133,612 Afghans voluntarily returned under the auspices of this program. However, nearly 50,000 more Afghans "spontaneously returned" without UNHCR assistance, their return "facilitated" by the Iranian authorities. UNHCR said that it was able to determine that the spontaneous returns were also voluntary.

The U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), however, considers up to 50,000 returns in 2000 to be involuntary. USCR's estimate is based, in part, on interviews conducted during a January 2001 site visit to western Afghanistan in which recent repatriates from Iran said that they had been coerced into returning. The USCR estimate includes not only the mass round-ups and returns that occurred prior to the joint repatriation exercise in the first three months of the year, but also continuing deportations during the UNHCR-Iranian joint exercise. There were reports of mass round-ups in May in Veramin. In November, 3,510 deportations to Afghanistan reportedly occurred via the Islam Qala border crossing. In December, more than 1,000 were reportedly deported through the same location. USCR's estimate also includes unknown, but believed to be substantial, numbers of Afghans attempting to enter Iran who were pushed back at or near the border, and who were never given the opportunity to claim asylum.

Critics of the repatriation program charged that drought- and conflict-ridden Afghanistan was not prepared to integrate returnees. They predicted that returnees would become destitute and internally displaced, and, ultimately, return to Iran with less certain status than when they left. At mid-year, a key nongovernmental partner in the repatriation program, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which had conducted medical screening of returnees, withdrew from the program.

Initially, UNHCR gave voluntary repatriates the equivalent of $20 in Iran and another $20 upon arrival in Afghanistan, but in August stopped giving cash in Iran both because of financial constraints and also to discourage repatriates from returning to Iran in the hope of receiving another cash grant. UNHCR also provided each family with plastic sheeting and, during the cold season, a blanket for each individual returnee. Throughout the program, UNHCR in Afghanistan continued to provide a cash grant, and the World Food Program provided 50 kilos of wheat per returnee. The International Organization for Migration provided free transport for returnees within Iran and as far into Afghanistan as Herat, but only partially subsidized onward travel to other locations in Afghanistan.

The Joint Program ended three weeks earlier than anticipated. UNHCR cited the "precautionary relocation" of its staff from Herat to Islamabad as the reason for discontinuing repatriation convoys. More than 52 percent of the participants in the repatriation program returned to Herat. Another 18 percent returned to Kabul, and more than 5 percent to Ghazni. Most of the returnees, about 65 percent, were ethnic Tajiks. Pashtuns represented 20 percent and Hazarahs, 10 percent.

Although an average of 3,516 persons per week voluntarily repatriated to Afghanistan during the joint BAFIA-UNHCR program, by some estimates almost the same number of Afghans continued to enter Iran, making little net difference in the number of Afghan refugees in Iran.

Refugees from Iraq

Iraqi refugees, like Afghans, are dispersed throughout the country, although they, too, are concentrated in areas bordering their homeland. The 387,000 documented Iraqis (mostly green card holders) are divided about evenly between Arabs and Kurds. Most have been in Iran since the 1980s. Many were expelled from Iraq purportedly for being of Iranian ancestry. Iraqi Shi'a Arabs congregate along Iran's southwestern border and Iraqi Kurds are mostly in the northwest.

Iraqis did not have the same opportunity as Afghans in 2000 to submit applications for refugee screening. There was still essentially no way for undocumented or newly arrived Iraqi asylum seekers to lodge an asylum claim with the Iranian authorities.

Iraqi Repatriation In June 1999, the Iraqi government said that it would not prosecute Iraqis who left Iraq illegally, and that it would issue passports to Iraqis in Iran regardless of their political background. (It made an exception for Iraqis who were expelled in the 1980s for supposed Iranian ancestry; Iraq continued to deny that they are Iraqi citizens.)

Thousands of Iraqi Shi'a Arabs responded in 1999 and 2000 by applying for passports. Although UNHCR told them that it was unable to monitor or guarantee their safety upon return, 2,577 insisted on returning in 1999. During 2000, the number of returning Iraqi Arabs dropped to 1,360, about half the number that repatriated the previous year.

Although thousands of Iraqi Kurds had also expressed an interest in voluntary repatriation, in August 1998, the Iraqi government blocked their path when it informed UNHCR that all Iraqi refugees repatriating from Iran, including persons wishing to return to the Kurdish-controlled north, would have to pass through Iraqi government controls. Thereafter, UNHCR declined to facilitate repatriations for Iraqi Kurds seeking to return to northern Iraq, and organized repatriations remained stalled throughout 1999. Nevertheless, an estimated 18,000 Iraqi Kurds returned spontaneously to northern Iraq in 1999 without UNHCR assistance and without passing through government controls. In 2000, spontaneous repatriations of Iraqi Kurds to northern Iraq slowed considerably; only 2,277 were known to have returned.

Other Refugees

Although the government claims to host about 26,000 refugees of other nationalities, including Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis, it has provided no information about them or about asylum procedures, and has not allowed UNHCR or other organizations access to them.

Iraqi POWs In April, nearly 2,000 Iraqi prisoners of war (POWs) from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War were repatriated with assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In May, the ICRC announced that another 5,000 Iraqi POWs had refused to repatriate and had been granted asylum in Iran. The Iranian government claims to have released 57,712 POWs since the end of the Iran-Iraq War.