JANUARY
12 January - Hundreds of Afghans have been arrested by Iranian police in a crackdown against illegal migrants, according to press reports. The Iranian daily, Iran Emrooz, said on Sunday that legal Afghan refugees have also been arrested and that the arrests have been taking place in the eastern cities of Zahedan, Zabol, Mashad and Kerman over the last two weeks. The newspaper said those arrested were held in a detention centre for up to four days and that some claim to have been beaten, although the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that so far, they could not confirm these reports.
19 January - The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reiterated its concern over the fate of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees in Iran, who are finding it harder and harder to remain in the host country, which sheltered them since 1979. “UNHCR expressed concern to the Iranian authorities in the past few months on several occasions that Afghans in Iran might be put under unfair pressure to return,” Marie-Helene Verney, a spokeswoman for UNHCR in Geneva, told IRIN on Tuesday.
FEBRUARY
22 February - Hundreds of people have been reported dead and up to 1,000 injured after a powerful earthquake struck the southeast Iranian province of Kerman on Tuesday. "There were no standing buildings, no structures that would give any shelter to any people - survivors of this earthquake," Kari Egge, a representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Iran, told IRIN following her visit to Douhan, a village she described as the quake's epicentre.
JUNE
17 June - Iranians went to the polls on Friday to vote for a new president, with many saying the elections are the tightest and most unpredictable in the 26-year history of the Islamic Republic. Early indications showed that the turnout was dramatically higher than expected. There were fears of a low turnout – unofficial opinion polls predicted a turnout of just 40 per cent, an embarrassingly low figure for a country where turnout is regularly as high as 70 percent. Analysts have said a low turnout would question the legitimacy of the regime.
30 June - A new tripartite agreement was signed on Tuesday between Iran, Afghanistan and the office of the United High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), facilitating the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees from Iran. "It is essential that the repatriation programme continues and UNHCR continues to be supported by the international community to enable us to assist in the voluntary repatriation and to provide assistance to Afghan refugees remaining in Iran," said Sten Bronee, UNHCR representative in Iran.
JULY
25 July - Human rights groups the world over have strongly condemned the recent execution of two gay teenagers in northeastern Iran. "It's entirely unacceptable that people are actually killed because of their sexuality," Kursad Kahramananoglu, head of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), the oldest and only membership-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organisation in the world, maintained from Istanbul. While exact details of the case remained unclear, he vowed if confirmed, ILGA would pursue the matter to the highest level, including the United Nations, noting a rise in homophobia in the world today.
OCTOBER
27 October - The Japanese government has donated US $1.5 million to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Iran to help Afghan refugees. The donation comes at a time when there has been a steady decline in donor contributions to UNHCR’s Afghan repatriation programme, coupled with a cutback in UNHCR’S country budget for Iran. “The reason the Japanese went for a generous contribution is that they see the lack of assistance to Iran,” said Safak Pavey, UNHCR external relations and public information officer in Iran.
30 October - Human rights groups fighting for gay rights have called on the United Nations to act on reports of executions based on sexual orientation in Iran. "We are against the death penalty on any grounds, however, I find it particularly abhorrent that these executions were reportedly carried out based on people's sexual orientation and in the name of Islam," Kursad Kahramananoglu, head of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), the oldest and only membership-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organisation in the world, said from Istanbul.
DECEMBER
26 December - Reconstruction efforts in Iran's southeastern city of Bam were continuing on Monday, following the successful construction of thousands of permanent shelters for survivors of the devastating earthquake that levelled the city exactly two years ago. "The Bam reconstruction programme has the potential to become a successful recovery programme, in that it not only has enhanced standards of earthquake safety in Bam but safety standards have been raised in other areas of Iran," Victoria Kianpour Atabaki, programme officer for Disaster Risk Management and Reconstruction for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Iran said from the capital, Tehran.
