But by the time her asylum application process took off, she was over 18, and no longer part of her parents’ case. Turkish officials claim that the returns of Afghan immigrants are voluntary. In 2010, refugees from Afghanistan numbered near 3,500 and made a sizable proportion of Turkey’s …   |  Français “Syria, before the war, unless you were politically involved in opposition groups, you had a stable life, and that has not been the case for Afghanistan,” Stoyer says. 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. Afghan Refugees Fighting COVID-19. 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. Mohseni brings a ballpoint pen with him to trace the letters of her name in the concrete tombstone, to make sure it does not disappear among the hundreds of knee-high concrete slabs in this cemetery in Van, in the east of Turkey near the Iranian border. For more information on this topic, please contact: Our fight against sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment, Environment, Disasters and Climate Change. He struggles to find an answer when asked what he misses about his native Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. “I was so focused on her stomach I did not notice her head injury.”. Afghan refugees in Turkey are in legal limbo in which their status is unclear. Afghanistan refugees are nationals of Afghanistan who left their country as a result of major wars or persecution. 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. One evening, 10 days after the accident, as Mohseni was being brought back to prison, he was told Zahra had died. Instead of calling an ambulance, the driver called other smugglers, who dropped the family off outside a hospital where Zahra was admitted for treatment. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) chapter in Turkey is helping to facilitate and fund these efforts. It took two more years for the Naiby family to be reunited in Germany, and a lengthy court battle for Naiby herself to get another chance to make her case for asylum. They took out all my fingernails with pliers,” he says. 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. Continued European resources, capacity and solidarity are needed to boost Greece’s response. 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. 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 UNHCR. “My daughter’s stomach was torn apart… her stomach was out of her body,” Mohseni says. Colombia followed, hosting nearly 1.8 million displaced Venezuelans. 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 … Problems of Afghan refugees after obtaining temporary residence in Turkey. 1) The UNCHR causes our problems to increase by not proceeding our files quickly. “But I felt big differences all the time between us, and every place I went in the streets, Iranian people would bother me, tell me terrible words, like cursing because you are Afghan, because you are lower than us, and I didn’t know why, because I was born there.”. At the Dogubayazit bus station in Turkey, a man from Afghanistan shows a video of the illegal border crossing between Afghanistan and Iran [Oscar Durand/Al Jazeera]Stuck now in Sariciman, Muhammad is kept along with dozens of other Afghans in a house with cardboard and tin foil covering the windows, one of several safe houses in the village that locals use to hide migrants until they are ready to be moved. Hamdi Mohseni visits the grave of his daughter Zahra, in a cemetery for the unidentified and those who cannot afford a grave plot, in Van, Turkey [Oscar Durand/Al Jazeera]Back in Van, the Mohseni family now lives surrounded by reminders of their journey. Afghan refugees in Turkey find themselves unable to work legally, waiting for a call from the United Nations that never seems to come. Community-based protection : Key ways that UNHCR … Hundreds of Afghans crossed the Turkey-Iran … By 1989, within a decade of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, more than six million Afghans were living in Pakistan and Iran, with thousands more in dozens of other countries around the world, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. In 2010, refugees from Afghanistan numbered near 3,500 and made a sizable proportion of Turkey… Greece, and other States on the EU external border, should not be left alone. UNHCR said it is "urging states to resettle as many refugees as possible in 2020 in order not to lose those resettlement opportunities for refugees, and to maintain resettlement quotas for 2021." No longer could an Afghan in Europe say they needed asylum because their country was at war. The local forces put a lot of pressure on people, they sent us to the front to fight when the Russians came,” he says. Most have fled the war in Afghanistan. Dear UNHCR Authorities, Afghans refugees are the third largest irregular refugee group in Turkey. They hiked through the mountains along the border, and in the winter snow, he says nine of the other Afghans travelling with him died. “They told me how to pass to not be arrested by either.”. “They have been coming through here since the Soviet invasion,” he told Al Jazeera, “but in the last three years it’s become a constant flow of refugees, and we wish they did not come.”. “I remember how people from all over the country came to the north to see the red tulips. “The fighting was especially bad in Mazar-i-Sharif. 02 March 2020 UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is appealing for calm and an easing of tensions on Turkey’s borders with the European Union in light of the present increased movements of people there – including refugees and asylum-seekers. This leaves irreparable harm in the lives of refugees. 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