Tehran calls for greater burden-sharing

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs Office (BAFIA), part of the Iranian interior ministry, and the coordinating body for refugee affairs, called for greater international burden-sharing in the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. "We have been patient for 20 years, and it's enough," Gholam-Reza Mashadi, the head of the BAFIA international affairs department, told IRIN in the capital, Tehran. "When it comes to burden-sharing, Iran is not getting the assistance it deserves," he said. "While international organisations and NGOs spend some money for the cost of Afghan refugees in Iran, it accounts to only one week of the year, with Tehran paying the rest." Asked why Iran was not receiving its share, he said: "The only reason why more humanitarian assistance is being attracted to Pakistan, and the refugees in Iran are forgotten, is because of political considerations." He complained of a confusion between political and humanitarian issues, saying that the emphasis should be on the latter. Mashadi said Iran had been telling the international community about its large refugee problem and the great burden it had put on the country, both socially and economically, for two decades. "Unfortunately, we have not been taken seriously." On the cost of hosting so many Afghan refugees - currently estimated by Tehran at 2.7 million, Mashadi said the government was paying out US $1 billion a year in subsidies, or approximately $2 per day per refugee, the same amount as paid for Iranian citizens. Social costs had been particularly hard on the country, he said. According to the labour ministry, about 900,000 job slots were now occupied by foreign refugees, most of them Afghans. "These could be filled by Iranian citizens, and presently there are three million unemployed in Iran," Mashadi said. Moreover, Afghan refugees were sending half the money they were earning in Iran back home to help their families, he added. "According to the Geneva Convention of 1951, there is no obligation on the host country to provide job opportunities, but Iran does," Mashadi stated. Moreover, he maintained, about 210,000 refugees, both Iraqi and Afghan, were enrolled in Iranian schools, costing the government $700 a year per student. Health issues were also significant, Mashadi said. Many diseases which had not been seen in Iran for many years, including malaria, had resurfaced as a result of increases in the refugee population. As the refugees were very poor, hospital charges, including those for surgery, had often been waived, thereby adding to national health costs. "These people don't have the money to pay for such services, and we are facing this every day," he said. Iran also incurred heavy costs for family planning and vaccination programmes involving the Afghan community, he added. Noting that Pakistan was receiving more humanitarian assistance than Iran, Mashadi pointed out that in spite of this, what Pakistan was getting did not suffice to meet the costs and responsibilities the country was shouldering. Asked to account for the difference in assistance respectively offered to the two countries, he said: "I do not want to discuss political issues, but would hope to see more funds coming our way." Visibly perplexed, he asked: "Is Iran alone responsible for the refugees? Is asylum not an international phenomenon?" He stressed that the time had come for other countries to share some of the burden. Sharing this view, Dr Hamid Reza Asefi, a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, told IRIN Iran had been hosting refugees since the beginning of the (1979) revolution, but no one had paid any attention. "Unfortunately world public opinion is not properly informed of the refugee situation in our country," he said. "The amount of help we have been given over the past 10 years is really negligible." Whereas the UN has called on Iran to open its borders to a potential refugee influx, Tehran has proposed the establishment of nine refugee camps within Afghan territory, six on the border with Khorasan Province and three on that with Sistan-Baluchestan. Iran has also offered its territory as a base from which humanitarian assistance can be channelled into Afghanistan. "We are open for assistance from all nations to come via Iran, including the United States," Asefi said. He confirmed that some US assistance had already been dispatched to Afghanistan from the northwestern city of Mashhad.