About half a million Afghans have left Iran this year.
According to the International Organization for Migration, about half a million Afghans living in Iran have returned to Afghanistan in the past few months. The reason for the return of Afghan workers is the devaluation of the rial currency in international markets.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced in a report published on Tuesday, August 7, that a large number of Afghans living in Iran have returned to their country.
As of August 1st of this year alone, the number of Afghans who have left Iran has been reported to be more than 442,000. This number is almost equal to the total number of Afghans who left Iran last year.
In 2017, a total of 466,000 Afghans left Iran.
The statistics published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are about the number of Afghans whose names are not registered by the organization as migrants in Iran. In fact, these Afghans are those who were working and living in Iran without valid identification documents.
According to Iranian authorities, another one and a half to two million Afghan refugees are living in Iran without identity papers.
Saeed Bayat, Director General of Foreign Nationals and Immigrants Affairs in Tehran Province, referred to the approximately three million "foreign nationals" population in Iran in July of this year and said that half of these people, mostly Afghans, live in Iran legally and the other half "illegally."
The International Organization for Migration report states that the reason for the mass return of Afghans is the economic crisis in Iran and the devaluation of the rial.
Explaining the economic situation in Iran, the German news agency wrote that the rial has lost two-thirds of its value against the US dollar and one-fifth of its value against the Afghani (the currency of Afghanistan) since the beginning of this year.
Afghan workers have also left Iran for Türkiye or the UAE to find work.
According to the Iranian Statistical Center report in June 2017, Afghans, with about 1.6 million people, constituted the largest immigrant population in Iran. They mainly live in the provinces of Tehran, Khorasan Razavi, and Qom. Afghans in Iran have been and are mostly engaged in hard and exhausting work.
In the current economic crisis in Iran, many have lost their jobs. Afghan workers living in Iran, as those working in the lowest economic ranks, are at greater risk of unemployment than ever before.
Source: DW
