health, education, international fundraising, Amayesh registration, issuance of travel permits,
registration and issuance of marriage certificates, coordination with other ministries on refugee
affairs, as well as official visits and coordination between all governmental departments
responsible for refugee affairs.
A majority of services provided to the refugee and asylum seeking population in the Islamic
Republic of Iran come from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
which works in partnerships with BAFIA and other Governmental institutions such as the
Ministry of Education, the Literacy Movement Organisation, the Ministry of Health, the State
Welfare Organisation, the Technical and Vocational Training Organisation, as well as the Iran
Health Insurance Organisation.5
Services and protection include legal assistance, support with regards to immigration
proceedings and documentation, provision of basic needs and essential services such as health
care, shelter and education.6 For example, UNHCR reported that, through a collaboration with
the Literacy Movement Organisation, 3,365 children and adolescents received literacy trainings
in 2020.7 Other examples of partnerships include UNHCR trainings of members of the
Government in matters of child protection and the co-funding, together with the Ministry of
Education, of the joint construction of 12 schools in refugee-hosting provinces. 8 There is no
official and readily available information from the Iranian Government regarding the number of
children who benefit from these measures and initiatives. Available data come for the most part
from UNCHR.
Despite these measures, reportedly unaccompanied children who travel to Iran do not have
guardianship or sufficient access to asylum and assistance with basic necessities such as shelter,
education and food. According to the Human Rights Watch’s submission to the Committee on
the Rights of the Child in 2015, child migrants and refugees “are often kept in rooms with
unrelated adults, sometimes beaten or otherwise abused by police or transit detention facility
guards, given inadequate food and no education during their stay, and often forced to pay fees in
order to leave the detention facilities.” The report states that none of the unaccompanied child
migrants and refugees interviewed for the report were given guardianship and were not provided
free legal assistance. 9
There is no readily available information that might indicate the existence of a process or
mechanism for asylum-seeking or refugee children to file complaints of violations of their
human rights, notably with regards to the absence of guardianship for unaccompanied children or
5
UNHCR, https://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/UNHCR%20Iran%20Fact%20Sheet%20-%20Apr-Jun%202020.pdf
UNHCR, https://reporting.unhcr.org/node/2527?y=2020#year
7
UNHCR, https://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/UNHCR%20Iran%20Fact%20Sheet%20-%20Apr-Jun%202020.pdf
8
UNHCR, https://reporting.unhcr.org/node/2527?y=2020#year
9
Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/03/13/iran-submission-committee-rights-child
6
2