and have assented to their applying individually to the UN refugee agency for refugee status.
This decision by the group likely means that its 3,400 members at Camp Ashraf will be scattered around the world.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced that it has already received a “significant number” of refugee applications from Camp Ashraf. It did not, however, announce what that number is. If a large number refuses to seek refugee status, the problem at Camp Ashraf—caused by the Iraqi demand that all Mojahedin-e Khalq members leave by year’s end—will continue.
However, Shahin Gobadi, the spokesperson for the organization at its headquarters in Paris, told McClatchy Newspapers that “all” residents of Camp Ashraf, including the leadership, had filed applications for refugee status, with the exception of those hospitalized or already holding travel documents for a third country.
The UNHCR said it has asked the Iraqi government to extend its deadline so the UNHCR can have time to process all the refugee applications.
That doesn’t end the issue, however. The UNHCR must still find countries willing to take in the Mojahedin-e Khalq members as refugees. The United States has been trying to find sponsoring nations for eight years without success.
But that may change once the UN agency has granted refugee status, thus making them eligible under the normal refugee laws in many countries.
The UNHCR made clear that it would not issue any blanket declaration for all 3,400 people at Camp Ashraf. It will only grant refugee status individually and after interviewing each applicant.
In the past, the UNHCR has complained that the Mojahedin-e Khalq leadership did not allow its staff to interview members in private. The UNHCR said it would not conduct those interviews at Camp Ashraf and is looking for some site away from the camp for those interviews. Officials have said in the past that members of the group have been subjected to pressure and coercion from the group’s leadership.
The UNHCR said no applicant would be required to denounce or even quit the Mojahedin organization. A UNHCR official said a few months ago that they will have to renounce violence, something he said group’s leadership had previously forbidden.
The new UNHCR announcement said its review procedure required it to look for evidence that an applicant had engaged in criminal actions—such as participating in military raids inside Iran—that would bar an applicant from receiving refugee status.
Vincent Cochetel, the Washington representative of the UNHCR, told Inter Press Service, an agreement allowing the individual applications was reached last month between UNHCR and the Mojahedin-e Khalq legal counsel in London.
Prior to that, the organization was demanding group refugee status.
The agreement suggests that the group has given up hope of succeeding in its major lobbying effort in Washington to have the group taken off the list of foreign terrorist organizations, which members had hoped would allow the Camp Ashraf residents to come to the United States.
