Iran Press/Iran News: Iran has been one of the world’s leading refugee hosts for decades and currently has some one million registered refugees from Afghanistan. In addition, over two million Afghans are estimated to live in Iran either without documentation or on national passports, said the UNHCR website.
"Iran leads by example in including refugees in national services. Since a law introduced in 2015, all Afghan children can go to school, regardless of whether they are refugees, holders of an Afghan national passport or undocumented. Refugee children study side by side with their Iranian classmates, following the national curriculum," it said.
Last October, UNHCR welcomed Iran’s amendment of the nationality law to allow children born to Iranian women and non-Iranian men such as Afghans to acquire Iranian nationality, regardless of whether they are born on Iranian territory.
Official figures estimate that some 480,000 Afghan refugees and undocumented children are currently enrolled in school for the 2019-2020 academic year, a steady increase from the previous years. In 2019 alone, Iran has created places for some 60,000 new Afghan students in its schools, the UN agency added.
UNHCR also expressed its concern that without additional global support for refugee operations in Iran, the agency's ability to continue supporting the government in providing education to Afghan children will be drastically affected.
In 2019, UNHCR co-funded with the government the construction of a dozen school buildings for refugees and Iranians (each with 12 classrooms) at a cost of US$650,000 each, but it said that with increasing construction costs and without enough funding the same may not be possible in 2020.
"Currently, some schools operate on two shifts to give the opportunity to as many children as possible to get an education. But many schools are still overcrowded, with teachers often struggling to allocate enough time to each student."
"So far for our Iran operations, UNHCR has received only 30 percent of the required US$98.9 million to date," the UN agency said a worrying number of refugee and undocumented families may have to take their children out of school and send them out to work to so they can contribute to the family income.
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