IOM: Hundreds of thousands of Afghans return from Iran

By beginning of August, 442,000 Afghans from Iran went back to Afghanistan. This is reported by International Organisation for Migration (IOM). The number has increased significantly: in previous year re were around 466,000 returnees.

The figures refer only to those Afghans who are not officially registered as refugees in Iran at UN Refugee facility UNHCR – people who had lived and worked in Iran without a valid residence permit. According to Iranian government, approximately 1.5 to two million illegally entered Afghans are in country, about one million are registered as refugees.

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The IOM led rise of Heimkehrerzahlen mainly due to economic crisis in Iran. The Iranian rial has lost almost two-thirds of its value to dollar since beginning of year and about a fifth against Afghani. Afghans are mainly employed in shadow economy in Iran and demand for this type of employment has fallen drastically. However, Afghanistan suffers even from high unemployment, a weak economic development and has a large number of internal refugees because of poor security situation.