December 26-2014
Human Rights Watch says Iran’s visa-extension plan for Afghan refugees is no substitute for an asylum system allowing newly arriving Afghans to lodge refugee claims.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry official announced the visa extension plan last week and described it as a reflection of Iran’s “brotherly relations” with Afghanistan.
Under the Iranian plan, the previously undocumented Afghans will be able to apply for temporary residence and work visas.
“The Iranian government deserves credit for sparing almost half-a-million Afghans the threat of imminent deportation,” said Patricia Gossman, senior Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But the visa extension won’t remedy a broken asylum system that routinely results in the detention and deportation of unregistered Afghans without access to refugee status, due process, or an opportunity for legal appeal of their forced removal.”
Afghanistan’s second deputy chief executive, Moham-mad Mohaqiq, confirmed some of the details of the visa extension plan to reporters on December 14. Mohaqiq said the Iranian government had also committed to allow undocumented Afghan children to study in Iranian schools, and to cut in half university fees for Afghan students.
From 2010 to June 2012, the Iranian government operated a Comprehensive Regularization Plan that offered undocumented Afghans in Iran an opportunity to register officially and apply for temporary visas and work permits with the possibility, but not the guarantee, that they would be extended.
The process required Afghan men without families to return to Afghanistan to apply for visas, while families could apply without leaving Iran. The process was difficult and costly for indigent migrants, in part because it required all applicants first to obtain Afghan passports.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), only 840,000 of the estimated 3 million Afghans living in Iran have legal status as refugees. The Iranian government has excluded the remainder from accessing asylum procedures, including the Afghans whose temporary legal status has now been extended.