TEHRAN – A trilateral meeting on offering better healthcare to refugees in Iran was held in Tehran on Tuesday with the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ivo Freijsen, in attendance.

Officials from the interior ministry and the health insurance organization were also present in the meeting, Mehr reported.

Freijsen appreciated Iran for providing refugees with health and insurance services, announcing readiness to help the country improve the services.

He read a message from Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, thanking Iran for its appropriate services to refugees, saying that the global community appreciates and honors Iran for its unparalleled services to refugees.

Refugees in Iran

Iran is host to one of the largest and most protracted urban refugee populations worldwide, with approximately 3 million Afghans living in the country, according to UNHCR.

Iran is hosting around one million documented foreign nationals, and perhaps another one million are illegally living in the country, the deputy interior minister Javad Naserian has said.

Some 700,000 foreign nationals illegally residing in Iran are expelled annually from the country, but many of whom return back for different reasons, IRIB reported.

At the end of 2018, Iran hosted close to one million refugees, making it the sixth-largest refugee host country in the world.

Iran also was the eighth largest refugee-hosting country in the world in 2019, hosting 951,142 Afghan refugees and 28,268 Iraqi refugees, according to the UNHCR.

One of the largest and most protracted urban refugee populations in the world is living in Iran; about 97 percent of refugees live in urban and semi-urban areas, while three percent are residing in 20 refugee resorts run by the UNHCR's main government counterpart.

Undocumented Afghans have access to free primary health services and similarly free COVID-19 related testing, treatment, and hospitalization, just like nationals.

MG