Most have fled the war in Afghanistan. Most other Afghans in the country have not been so lucky. The change in policy immediately put more than 11,000 Afghans in Germany on a list for deportation and called into question hundreds of thousands of other pending applications by Afghans in the country. The rest of the family sits in the next room, quietly waiting for the now routine ritual of mourning to end. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) chapter in Turkey … According to the UNHCR, as of October 2017 there are approximately 3.2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey. When it comes to Afghan refugees in Turkey, we believe that UNHCR chooses not to uphold the rights of these refugees, and refuses to comply with its own mandate. There are around 2.8 million documented and undocumented Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, making it the largest refugee population in the world after the Syrians in Turkey. The law was eventually enacted but with penalties only for civil servants who help those scheduled for deportation. In 2010, refugees from Afghanistan numbered near 3,500 and made a sizable proportion of Turkey’s … The coronavirus pandemic has brought a temporary decline in those figures: Just 44,327 Afghans were apprehended in Turkey between January and November 2020, probably as a result of lockdowns in Turkey and Europe, as well as asylum application processing being suspended in European countries. Following a recent change in asylum procedures for Afghans and other non-Syrians in Turkey, Afghans have been facing increasing difficulties in registering with the authorities. Mohseni was holding four-year-old Zahra in his lap, when, somewhere near the town of Bitlis, the minivan flipped off the road. | Español Muhammad has spent his entire life as a refugee, shuttling between his homeland and neighbouring countries in what he says has been a search for a stable life. The local forces put a lot of pressure on people, they sent us to the front to fight when the Russians came,” he says. Before leaving Afghanistan, Naiby’s mother worked as the top official overseeing women’s prisons in Kabul. Turkey currently hosts the largest population of refugees in the world, including a growing number of Afghan refugees. Sprawled on cushions in an apartment in Van, an ailing Khodadad Yakoubi, 76, carefully traces his fingers over the lines in his Quran, proudly reciting. “I told them we were poor, and we are only going to get medication for my child, but they detained me. Germany hosted the third largest number, almost 1.5 million, with Syrian refugees … We speak to some of those facing impossible choices. For many, smuggling people is the most profitable business in the area – a badly kept secret the villagers are happy to explain over lunch. Their foreign “guests,” as the locals refer to the people crossing the frontier, are kept in village homes with curtains drawn to keep out prying eyes. Wiry and animated, the 28-year-old graduated from a university in Tehran and dreams of becoming a professional athlete. Al Jazeera reported that 12 Afghan refugees fighting COVID-19 in the Turkish city of Kayseri are helping local volunteer groups with funding from the UNHCR. Left with nowhere close to home to take refuge, many are trying for Europe, a journey that takes them west through Iran and Turkey. Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. The Islamic Republics of Iran and Pakistan jointly host 91 per cent — some 2.4 million — of Afghan refugees worldwide. It only became worse.”. “I remember how people from all over the country came to the north to see the red tulips. UNHCR must explain why the case of all Afghan refugees, which have been accepted already by UNHCR, are suspended within 5 to 7 years. There are almost 2.5 million registered refugees from Afghanistan. "Expanding safe and legal pathways to protection, including through resettlement, saves refugees' lives and it can also mitigate their resort to dangerous journeys by land or sea," Triggs said. According to German law, asylum seekers suffering from mental illness should not be deported, as they are considered highly vulnerable, but Soyer says it is becoming increasingly difficult to prove that an asylum seeker falls into this category. He struggles to find an answer when asked what he misses about his native Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. In July 2018, the Member States and the European Commission agreed to mobilise another €3 billion for the Refugee Facility. Even well-documented and publicly known asylum cases of Afghans fleeing the Taliban – like that of the Naiby family – now faced rejection. Problems of Afghan refugees after obtaining temporary residence in Turkey. “The group was a kilometre or two ahead of us, and the guide beat us with a stick to keep pace with them,” he says. UNHCR initiative sees Afghans in Kayseri produce 1,000 face masks a day and soap to aid hospitals and local community. In 2003, Iran began requiring all Afghan refugees to register for a protected status in exchange for restrictions on where they could work, live and attend school, or face deportation. For nearly a year, they were moved from city to city in Germany, between makeshift camps in school gymnasiums and hospitals. … See more of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency on Facebook Turkey is home to almost 3.6 million Syrian refugees and close to 330,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers of other nationalities, including Afghans and Pakistanis, according to the … Travelling outside of one’s designated district requires permission. She takes them out, gently pressing Zahra’s pretty, blood-stained, dress to her cheeks. One might note where the body was found; another might have a number signifying where in a year’s sequence of burials that one took place; another might include the name of a place – the authorities’ best guess at where the deceased came from. The pressure on Afghans in Iran only intensified with the imposition of US sanctions on the country over its nuclear programme in 2018. “So I had to pick up my son and put him on my back to move fast.”. Most are shackled in their seats and guarded by German police officers hired as private security to accompany them on the flights. The city of Kabul, Afghanistan [Oscar Durand/Al Jazeera]“Is it possible to go and live in Afghanistan as a young woman, alone?” Naiby says. Zakira Hekmat too confirms these arbitrary actions. Turkey hosts some four million refugees and asylum seekers, according to the UNHCR, making it the largest refugee-hosting country in the world. Estimates of the undocumented Afghan population in Turkey vary widely. Afghan diaspora/refugees; Regions with significant populations Iran 2.5 million (2015 estimate) Afghans in Iran Pakistan 2+ million Afghans in Pakistan Germany 260,000 (People holding Afghan citizenship as of 31.12.2018) Afghans in Germany United Arab Emirates 300,000 UAE Russia 150,000 Afghans in Russia Turkey 120,500 Afghans in Turkey … With Turkey financing the bulk of its refugee response, the Government called for sustained international responsibility-sharing in line with the Global Compact on Refugees, and proactively contributed to the Global Refugee Forum in December 2019. Take a look around and discover what you need to know about your stay in Turkey, including where you can go to seek further assistance. The last few years, according to the UN, have been the deadliest in Afghanistan for more than a decade, with more than 10,000 civilians killed or injured every year since 2014. 116,403 Afghan asylum seekers and 1,192 Afghan refugees are residing in Turkey.² 41,559 Afghans in an irregular situation were arrested by Turkish authorities from January to October 2020.³ 6,000 Afghans were deported from Turkey to Afghanistan from January to October 2020. In each year, more than half of those returning to Afghanistan were deported by Iran. Officials allege 55 migrants were forced into a river by Iran’s border guards, with some of them beaten and tortured. In 2010, refugees from Afghanistan numbered near 3,500 and made a sizable proportion of Turkey’s registered migrants. Afghan refugees are helping to fight COVID19 in Turkey. UNHCR: Urban Refugee Women's Network – Turkey: Publisher: UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date: December 2017: Country: Syrian Arab Republic | Turkey: Topics: Refugees: Related Document(s) UNHCR: Gender Equality Promising Practices Syrian Refugees in the Middle East and North Africa: Cite as Turkey hosts refugees from many countries. Some days, the smugglers demand more money, other days they say they must wait for the Turkish police along the roads to let their guard down. “The Russians had occupied my country, and there was a lot of fighting,” he recalls with effort when asked why they left Afghanistan. Zimbabwe is hemorrhaging gold. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, welcomes Iran’s efforts to extend education opportunities for nearly half a million Afghan … The Communication with Communities (CwC) team in Turkey was on a mission. Refugees and asylum-seekers may benefit from social assistance coordinated by the governorships in the provinces. In Greece, UNHCR teams reported the arrival of some 1,200 people on 1 March and 2 March morning on the East Aegean islands (Lesvos, Chios, Samos) - higher than the recent daily rate. Up to 50 per cent of Afghan refugees … Each day they were allowed two hours out to visit the hospital, where Zahra had slipped into a coma. But by the time her asylum application process took off, she was over 18, and no longer part of her parents’ case. Nearly every family here has someone in prison on charges of smuggling, he says. Her mother was granted asylum, but Naiby was not. Most have fled the war in Afghanistan. As Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours shut their doors, many refugees embark on the treacherous journey to Europe. Afghanistan refugees are nationals of Afghanistan who left their country as a result of major wars or persecution. Over the years, things only seemed to become messier in Nangarhar. Neither the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees nor EU refugee law provides any legal basis for the suspension of the reception of asylum applications. UNHCR Representation in Turkey, Enis Behic Koryurek Sokak No: 15/A, ]Aziziye Mahallesi, 06550 Cankaya, Ankara, 06550 Ankara, Turkey. Afghan refugees in Turkey find themselves unable to work legally, waiting for a call from the United Nations that never seems to come. 1) The UNCHR causes our problems to increase by not proceeding our files quickly. Only around half of the refugees are registered, with the rest to live without documents, mostly in northeastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan provinces which border war-infested Afghanistan. The EU signed an agreement with Afghanistan in 2016, essentially tying aid for the country to assurances it would streamline the return of Afghans whose asylum claims were rejected in Europe. Afghan Refugees Fighting COVID-19. Since 2014, Turkey has been the country hosting the largest number of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate in the world – with the vast majority being nationals of the Syrian Arab Republic. The UN refugee agency UNHCR warned, in a statement published on Thursday, that the number of refugees resettled in 2020 would be very small compared to previous years. The women take turns cooking food for them while the men scout ahead on the roads to check for police before moving them west, towards Istanbul, and towards Europe. Turkey's refugee breakdown in 2019 was "neighbor countries:" Syrians 3.6 M, Iraqis 142,000, Iranians 39,000, "Asia:" Afghans 172,000, "Africa:" 11,700. Dressed in a dark shalwar kameez, he speaks warily as he shares his story under the watchful gaze of a villager guarding him with a stick. In 2015, Tehran began offering universal free education and health care, even for un-registered Afghan refugees. For an Afghan to be granted asylum, they now needed to show they, personally, were being threatened in their country. Originally from Afghanistan, … Dear UNHCR Authorities, Afghans refugees are the third largest irregular refugee group in Turkey. And German authorities floated the idea of following a trend in other European countries of prosecuting refugee rights activists for simple actions like publicising the time and location of a deportation flight. Under the administration of the governorships, the Social Assistance and Solidarity … Turkey currently hosts some 3.6 million registered Syrian refugees … He lived in Germany for three years, but after his asylum case was rejected, he was deported back to Kabul where he has no relatives or friends [Oscar Durand/Al Jazeera]Some Afghans facing deportation are so distraught at the idea of being forced to return that they try to take their own lives, but even that does not halt action against them, says Jürgen Soyer, a psychiatrist who has treated refugees and torture survivors for decades. Groups there have included Syrians, Afghans, Iranians, Sudanese and other nationalities - including women, children and families, arriving in precarious conditions. On the borders between Turkey and the EU, UNHCR is working with national partners, Turkish Red Crescent, IOM and Unicef, assessing the situation and providing humanitarian assistance where needed. Gulchaman Nowruzi, 65, kisses her copy of the Quran next to her husband Khodadad Yaqubi, 76, at their home in Van, Turkey, where they live with their two daughters [Oscar Durand/Al Jazeera]Yakoubi, his wife, and their infant son fled to Iran in 1981, not expecting the war to last long. Can a key reform curb smuggling? There, he says, Iranian border guards robbed them of all they had. While the situation on the Turkey’s western borders and Greece and movement of several thousand people is of concern, the humanitarian disaster unfolding in the northwest Syria and massive humanitarian needs in Idlib for some 950,000 of internally displaced people continues to require urgent action. “There is no advantage of being near the border, except the smuggling, but that brings its own problems,” says Ulgen. In 2015 and 2016, at the height of the flow, nearly half a million Afghans in total were able to apply for asylum in Europe. As such, these two countries host some 12 per cent of the global refugee population. Only 15,425 refugees … Welcome to the ‘Help’ website run by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. They have the right to reside in the country, but lack the right to work or the kind of state assistance needed to avoid working. But soon after they had submitted all their documents to the embassy, a car bomb exploded there in May 2017, killing 150 people, and prompting Berlin to shut down all diplomatic missions in the country. Turkey hosts some four million refugees and asylum seekers, according to the UNHCR, making it the largest refugee-hosting country in the world. Furthermore, many of the UNHCR quotas for the resettlement of refugees in third countries (such as in Europe), which formerly belonged to Iranians, Afghans and Iraqis, were allocated … Additionally4, 170,000 Afghan refugees and asylum seekers reside in Turkey, as a transit country for migratory routes to Europe5. Persons entering irregularly on the territory of a State should also not be punished if they present themselves without delay to the authorities to seek asylum. But a host of restrictions still apply even if an Afghan is properly registered. By the time they were finally interviewed by German asylum officials about their case, Germany and the EU had made it far more difficult for Afghans to be granted asylum. In Turkey, Mohseni and the others spent weeks being moved around by more smugglers, driven in the dead of night from one place to the next as they moved west. Turkey currently hosts the largest population of refugees in the world, including a growing number of Afghan refugees. By 2015, the province was a battlefield for a three-way war between ISIL (ISIS), the Taliban, and the government. … The UNHCR estimates that 10,000 Afghans will arrive in Turkey seeking asylum this year. “The fighting was especially bad in Mazar-i-Sharif. | Français Measures taken by the EU and Turkey to stem the flow of people to Europe have sharply reduced asylum applications in Europe. A 21-year-old sleeps in the back of a butcher shop in Kabul, Afghanistan after being returned from Europe. Mohseni and his family members were arrested by Turkish police. Refworld is the leading source of information necessary for taking quality decisions on refugee status. One evening, 10 days after the accident, as Mohseni was being brought back to prison, he was told Zahra had died. But they kept driving late into the night, as they took unpaved roads through the mountains to evade police. Dear UNHCR Authorities, Afghans refugees are the third largest irregular refugee group in Turkey. They paid smugglers to cross into Iran from Afghanistan’s Herat province, then spent another month and a half being passed from one smuggler to the next, westward through Iran. Despite being born in Iran and speaking Farsi like a local, she says her hopes were dashed by a litany of laws meant to keep Afghans from settling down. Afghan refugees voluntarily repatriated with the assistance of UNHCR, including 6,100 from Pakistan, 1,900 from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and 80 from other countries 2,140 households received tents and 50,650 households received core relief items and sanitary kits from UNHCR … Afghan Hazara asylum seekers in Turkey are facing an uncertain future due to a shift in policy by UNHCR. According to Turkish officials, the vast majority of graves have been filled with Afghans, who for four decades have been fleeing the chaos wrought in Afghanistan by one of the world’s longest ongoing conflicts. About 23,780 Afghans were deported in 2019.⁴ AFGHAN … “I grew up with a big question in my mind,” says Kubra Yakoubi in fluent English, “what’s the difference between us, what is a refugee, what is an Afghan girl, what are these things?”. Finally, in early 2019, one night in the city of Van – “when the smuggler figured he couldn’t get any more money out of us,” Mohseni says – they were put in a minivan and told they would be taken west to the city of Tatvan, and then on to Ankara. It didn’t happen. Buying real estate, obtaining permits to work, even getting a SIM card are among a long list of activities that Afghans can only do through the help of Iranian nationals. In 2019, the … But even those Afghans who arrived in Europe before the restrictions were put in place did not have an easy time being granted asylum. refugees, Afghans constitute the second largest refugee population after Syrians. 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