IRIN
IRAN: UNHCR continues to assist Afghan refugees
11 August 2004


[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ANKARA, 11 August (IRIN) - The office of the United Nations High 
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will continue to assist Afghan refugees 
inside Iran, despite claims by the Iranian government earlier this week 
that it had cut assistance to its refugee programmes. In just over two 
years, the UN refugee agency has assisted hundreds of thousands of Afghans 
to voluntarily return home.

"UNHCR is and will continue to assist Afghan refugees inside Iran," 
Marie-Helene Verney, a spokeswoman for the agency told IRIN from Geneva on 
Wednesday, noting her surprise at the claim. "The idea that we have ceased 
to provide assistance is simply not based on the reality of all the work 
that we are doing on the ground."

The UN refugee agency had first informed Tehran one year earlier of 
reductions in some of its assistance plans, Verney maintained, noting, 
however, this had been done because of the large number of Afghans that 
had returned to their homeland.

"There has been a sharp fall in the number of Afghan refugees in Iran. 
Since 2002, almost 950,000 have repatriated to Afghanistan. The reduction 
in assistance is linked to the diminishing numbers basically," the UNHCR 
official explained.

Her comments follow a report on Tuesday that the United Nations had cut 
the assistance it was providing to Iran for Afghan refugees for the 
current year, according to Ahmad Hosseini, deputy interior minister and 
head of the Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs (BAFIA), the 
coordinating body for refugee affairs.

"This issue made Iran suspend the services it was offering to Afghan 
refugees and immigrants in camps too," the Iranian news agency (IRNA) 
quoted him as saying, adding: "The UN assistance to Afghan refugees during 
the past 20 years covered only 5 percent of the expenses incurred by Iran 
because of the presence of Afghans."

Commenting on this, Verney said: "Iran has been very generous in providing 
for a very large refugee population for several decades. We do not know 
exactly how much money the government has spent on refugees, but UNHCR has 
spent literally millions of dollars in the country to assist Afghan 
refugees."

And while she agreed that there had been reductions in medical and 
educational assistance to refugees through the end of this year, she 
emphasised again this was linked to the large number of people who had 
returned home, adding, however, health assistance to vulnerable groups 
would continue.

According to UNHCR, as of last Sunday, 941,617 Afghans had voluntarily 
returned to their homeland from Iran since the start of the repatriation 
effort in April 2002, with over 296,000 since the beginning of this year 
alone.

As part of that assistance effort, returnees register at one of 11 
voluntary repatriation centres (VRCs) located throughout Iran - including 
the cities of Mashhad, Qom, Esfahan, Kerman, Shiraz, Yazd, Arak, Zabol and 
Zahedan, as well as two in Tehran. There they are provided with an 
assistance package, including a small monetary grant to facilitate their 
return.

"The numbers are really up at the moment. Almost 3,000 people are going 
back each day," Verney said, adding as those numbers continue, the agency 
would be placing an even greater emphasis on rebuilding efforts inside 
Afghanistan. "As people return, it is quite natural to see more money 
being reallocated for reconstruction inside the country," she said.

Iran, alongside Pakistan, remains one of the largest host countries to the 
Afghan diaspora today.


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004


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