Voluntary Return of Refugees, Iran’s Principled Policy: Deputy FM
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Seyed Abbas Araqchi urged refugees living in Iran to voluntarily return home and use the experience they gained here to reconstruct their home country.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s principled policy on refugees is based on their voluntary return,” Araqchi said in a Sunday meeting with head of the Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Pedro Commissario Afonso.
The Iranian official went on to say that it is the responsibility of Iran and the entire world to provide the grounds for the return of refugees so that they could play a role in rebuilding their homeland.
The UNHCR official and the high-ranking authorities accompanying him are in Tehran to confer with Iranian officials mainly on the conditions of Afghan refugees, who constitute the largest population of refugees in Iran.
“We believe Afghan refugees, using the expertise and experience they gained in our country, can serve as efficient forces in reconstructing their homeland,” Araqchi stressed.
He further noted that the only way for Afghanistan to succeed is through reconstruction of the country.
“With the reconstruction of Afghanistan, the grounds for the activities of such terrorist groups as the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Daesh (the Arabic acronym for Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) would be eliminated,” Araqchi added.
Commissario, for his part, appreciated Iran for “generously hosting” Afghan refugees, saying Iran’s measures to help and support them are a brilliant example for the international community.
Back in May, Iranian and Afghan officials in a meeting in Tehran discussed ways to facilitate and speed up the return of Afghan refugees to their home country after years of residing in Iran.
“Iran and Afghanistan are determined to strengthen ties and promote cooperation, and we try to create good conditions for the return of Afghan refugees to their motherland,” Iran’s Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said at the time after a meeting with Afghanistan's Minister of Refugees and Repatriation Seyed Hussain Alemi Balkhi.
Iran has hosted Afghan refugees since the late 1970s following the occupation of their country by the Soviet Union troops. Although many of those refugees have returned to their country voluntarily, there are still hundreds of thousands of documented and undocumented Afghans in Iran.
