A senior Iranian official has said the government is working to reduce the number of Afghan migrants in Iran to three percent of the population, down from the current estimate of more than six percent.
Nader Yarahmadi, head of the Interior Ministry’s Centre for Foreign Nationals and Immigrants Affairs, said during a meeting in Yazd that “only legal foreign nationals can remain in the country, and illegal foreigners must be deported,” according to the state-run IRIB News Agency.
He said more than 1.41 million undocumented Afghan migrants have been deported from Iran over the past seven months as part of what he described as efforts to “establish order and security.”
Yarahmadi’s comments come amid growing international concern over the mass deportation of Afghan refugees. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said earlier that more than 1.9 million Afghans have been expelled from Iran and Pakistan in the past seven months, calling for an immediate halt to all forced deportations.
Iran hosts one of the largest Afghan refugee populations in the world, with millions having fled decades of conflict, economic hardship and Taliban restrictions in their homeland.
