A number of Afghan refugee support groups in Iran are urging the Taliban government to resume issuing electronic IDs and passports in various cities across the country.
Asifa Stanekzai, head of the Afghan Refugee Support Foundation in Iran, told VOA that the closure of consulates and ID distribution centers has caused more problems for Afghan refugees in the country.
Ms. Stanekzai added: “When we can’t get an ID card, we can’t get a passport and when we can’t get a passport, for a student who wants to go to university, unfortunately he can’t go to university … One of the tasks of the Afghan embassy is to reactivate the Tazkera and Passport Distribution Centers.”
On August 15, 2021, when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the distribution of electronic IDs and passports to Afghans in Iran was closed.
The director of the Afghan Refugee Support Center in Iran also said that according to the agreement signed between Afghanistan and Iran under the previous government, it was decided that Afghan refugees would be allowed to enter the country after obtaining an electronic ID card. Residence would have been legal.
An Afghan refugee who did not want to be named told VOA that they are living in difficult conditions because there is currently no legitimate government to solve their problems.
The Afghan refugee said that the work of the electronic ID card issuance agency had progressed to some extent, but with the suspension of the activities of these centers, the work was halved.
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s Deputy Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, Arsala Kharoti, who visited Iran last January, criticized the use of electronic ID cards for Afghan refugees in Iran after returning to Kabul from Iran.
He said he had opposed the move with Iranian officials: “We told him that there is no other country in the world that tells a refugee to come and give you an ID so that I can recognize you as an Afghan.”
Figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that one million Afghan refugees are currently living in Iran with legal documents and about one million more are living in the country without legal documents.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has also said that recent developments have sent 500,000 Afghans to Iran.
