Introduction
Iran hosts one of many world’s largest refugee populations-the Afghans. It’s a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Conference (“Conference”) and for the reason that opening up of their borders to Afghan refugees, has at all times portrayed itself as a “brother” to the Afghans. Nonetheless, with the change in financial and social circumstances within the nation, the refugee inhabitants that was as soon as a logo of brotherhood and solidarity, typically used to additional state pursuits, was labelled as a safety risk that threatened the financial and social cloth of the nation. Mass deportations, fixed surveillance, and violence in the direction of Afghan refugees turned a typical prevalence. Furthermore, the very framework that was supposed to acknowledge and assist them combine into the society, was used to hide mistreatment, tighten management, and facilitate fixed surveillance of the weak.
This piece examines the Iranian refugee framework as of 2025. It contends that regardless of Iran’s ratification of the Conference and the 1967 Protocol Referring to the Standing of Refugees (“Protocol”), it actively makes use of its home authorized framework to violate rules of worldwide refugee regulation, which has significantly antagonistic penalties for Afghan refugees. Firstly, the piece highlights the present state of Afghan refugees in Iran, demonstrating how Iran is actively flouting worldwide regulation rules and going towards the very Conference they ratified. Secondly, it makes an attempt to spotlight the inherent pressure between refugee regulation and politics, suggesting that the answer to the issue of financial instability and social integration in Iran lies within the acceptance of the refugees itself. Lastly, it offers a two-pronged method which makes an attempt to steadiness Iran’s pursuits with that of its obligations in the direction of Afghan refugees.
Present State of the Refugees and the Violation of the Refugee Conference
A assessment of the evolution of Iran’s stance in the direction of Afghan refugees makes it evident that there was a big change within the nation’s refugee framework. Greater than 4 hundred ten thousand refugees and migrants have been deported for the reason that conclusion of the twelve-day warfare with Israel in June 2025. In whole, multiple million refugees have been pushed in a foreign country in 2025, which is an unprecedented degree of returns. The Afghan refugees, as soon as a logo of solidarity, and the spine of Iran’s labor pressure, have been now parts of risk. Native media, politicians, and the Iranian inhabitants started treating them as terrorists and criminals, typically being enabled by the individuals in energy. That is supplemented by the accounts of Afghan migrants being crushed and humiliated by safety forces, with a few of them being abruptly deported. The legality of their keep within the nation didn’t matter, for there are accounts of authorized paperwork of Afghans being shredded by the Iranian police.
The deportation of Afghans to their nation of origin, particularly within the aftermath of the Taliban’s takeover, violates the precept of non-refoulement beneath Article 33 of the Conference. The Conference forbids return and non-admittance of refugees on the border when there are cheap grounds for believing that the refugee can be liable to irreparable hurt upon return to their nation of origin. Whereas Iran claims that part of the inhabitants is voluntarily leaving the nation, its claims elevate suspicion given the shortage of adequate information in addition to Afghan accounts of their remedy in Iran. Among the many core elements of voluntary repatriation are bodily, authorized, and materials security. Ebbing of violence and non-discriminatory entry to providers are, subsequently, sine qua non for voluntary repatriation. Within the present case, the inflow of Afghan refugees in Iran spiked throughout the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, a scenario which nonetheless persists within the nation.
Moreover, UNHCR studies that over 70% of Afghan returnees from Iran have been forcibly expelled- a lot of them ladies and kids. The deportation of refugees is extraordinarily harmful for girls and lady youngsters, given the report of gender-based persecution and human rights violations which can be prevalent in Afghanistan beneath the Taliban rule. Due to this fact, Iran’s characterisation of sending again Afghans as “voluntary” isn’t merely factually doubtful but in addition legally irrelevant the place the circumstances within the nation of origin negate the opportunity of knowledgeable, uncoerced selection.
The precept of non-refoulement can solely be put aside if there are cheap grounds for contemplating the refugee a hazard to the safety of the nation they reside in. The Conference doesn’t require strict proof for contemplating a refugee as a hazard to nationwide safety. If a person has been beforehand convicted of a severe crime, he may be understood to represent a hazard to the group of Iran. Nonetheless, even when the exception to the precept of non-refoulement is triggered, it has been held by the courtroom in Manickavasagam Suresh v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) that refoulement can solely happen if a considerable threat to the nationwide safety of the state was confirmed. This strikes past merely suspecting that a person, by means of his ethnicity, is a risk to the nation. The state should produce proof of such doubts and should observe the authorized course of slightly than resorting to quick deportation of such people. By requiring demonstrable and substantial threat slightly than mere reliance on broad or unsubstantiated suspicions, the courtroom strengthened due course of and upheld the necessity for particular person evaluation. Furthermore, it narrowed the scope for arbitrary deportations and ensured safety of refugees by stopping deportations based mostly on arbitrary requirements.
Regardless of clear judicial steering on evidentiary thresholds, the Conference lacks a definition of “cheap grounds” in provisions governing non-refoulement exceptions. This textual ambiguity severely undermines refugee safety, even with judgments and UNHCR directives clarifying its scope. It permits restrictive state interpretations that may justify deportations whereas remaining formally according to the textual content of the Conference. This has antagonistic penalties on the rights of the refugees as a result of it permits Iran to have interaction in deportations on the unprecedented ranges that it’s doing proper now, just by stating that it has cheap grounds to imagine that they’re severe criminals, with no sufficient information, statistics or grounds to show the identical.
Moreover, mass deportations additionally have an effect on refugees who proceed to remain throughout the nation. They solid them as wrongdoers and criminals, reinforcing xenophobic attitudes and additional undermining their prospects for profitable integration throughout the host nation. Iran at present demonstrates the same round sample. It makes use of deportation as a coverage instrument to alleviate itself of the financial burden related to internet hosting a big refugee inhabitants. Nonetheless, a consequence of this deportation is the rising Afghanophobia and stereotyping of Afghan refugees in Iran which makes it tough for these residing within the nation to efficiently combine inside its tradition and contribute in the direction of ameliorating financial circumstances.
Whereas most Afghans are being unfairly deported from the nation, these remaining are additionally subjected to manage, surveillance, and mistreatment by the Authorities. Afghan refugees have confronted elevated motion restrictions, and prohibition on residency has turn out to be stricter. Afghan migrants should not allowed to reside in nineteen Iranian provinces. Moreover, most second and third technology Afghans, regardless of being fluent in Persian and raised in Iran itself, are nonetheless denied citizenship, authorized jobs, and entry to banking providers. To present this unjust framework some legitimacy, the regime launched new rules imposing fines on employers of undocumented Afghans, criminalizing visa overstays past six months, and limiting authorized residency to 6 slender classes. This was not an try and steadiness state pursuits with its obligations in the direction of refugees- it was an try to hide deeper injustice.
A query inevitably arises upon observing the scenario in Iran: what led to this shift? What prompted this unprecedented remedy of Afghan refugees within the nation? The reply to this query lies in financial instability. After many years of financial mismanagement and worldwide sanctions, Afghan refugees at the moment are seen as a legal responsibility. The hate and terror inflicted upon the refugee inhabitants is an try by the regime to hide its personal failures of financial collapse, political disarray and rising unrest. Nonetheless, what Iran actively overlooks is the contribution that Afghans make to their economic system. The refugee inhabitants acts as an agent of financial stability and prosperity and is engaged in professions similar to livestock farming and tile work, in addition to development work in city areas. Moreover, the Afghan workforce has been documented to display increased effectivity and productiveness than the native workforce.
The contradiction on the coronary heart of Iran’s refugee coverage is unmistakable. Afghans within the nation are relied upon for his or her labor whereas concurrently being constructed as an financial burden, rendering them disposable in regulation but very integral to the economic system in observe. This disjuncture reveals that the disaster isn’t solely a humanitarian one, but in addition authorized and political. It raises the query of whether or not worldwide refugee obligations, significantly of creating nations that face financial turmoil, can survive after they collide with the state’s perceived financial and safety pursuits. It’s this pressure, uncovered by means of Iran’s remedy of the refugees inside its borders, that Half II of this piece proceeds to look at and reconcile.
Click on right here to learn half II.
Anushka Mahapatra is a third-year regulation pupil on the Nationwide Legislation Faculty of India College, Bangalore.
Image Credit score: UNHCR/Sebastian Wealthy
