Afghans who fled decades ago are now being forced back to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as Iran, Pakistan, or the US turn their backs on them. With refugees who were once promised safety now being deported into crisis, why are these countries choosing to abandon them, and what does this reveal about the state of asylum worldwide?
Demolition operations being conducted by Israel in Gaza’s southern Rafah Governorate have been stepped up sharply, an investigation by Al Jazeera’s Sanad investigations unit has found.
Israel’s defence ministry has announced a plan to relocate 600,000 people into what observers say would be “concentration camps” in the area in southern Gaza, with plans to expand this to the Strip’s entire population.
Sanad’s analysis of satellite imagery up to July 4, 2025, shows the number of demolished buildings in Rafah rising to about 28,600, up from 15,800 on April 4, 2025, according to data from the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
This means that approximately 12,800 buildings were destroyed between early April and early July alone – a marked acceleration in demolitions that has coincided with Israel’s new push into Rafah launched in late March 2025.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, told reporters on Monday that an initial 600,000 Palestinians living in the coastal al-Mawasi area would be transferred to Rafah, the location for what he called a new “humanitarian city” for Palestinians, within 60 days of any agreed ceasefire deal.
According to Katz, the entire civilian population of Gaza – more than 2 million people – will eventually be relocated to this southern city.
A proposal seen by Reuters carrying the name of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) detailed plans for a “Humanitarian Transit Area” in which Gaza residents would “temporarily reside, deradicalise, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so”.
The minister said Israel hopes to encourage Palestinians to “voluntarily emigrate” from the Gaza Strip to other countries, adding that this plan “should be fulfilled”.
He also stressed that the plan would not be run by the Israeli army, but by international bodies, without specifying which organisations would be implementing it.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) – which has been banned by Israel – warned against the latest mass forced displacement plan.
“This would de facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations,” he said, adding that it would “deprive Palestinians of any prospects of a better future in their homeland”.
Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg told Al Jazeera that the plan was “for all facts and purposes a concentration camp” for Palestinians in southern Gaza, meaning that Israel is committing “what is an overt crime against humanity under international humanitarian law”.
“It should be taken very seriously,” he said, and questioned the feasibility of the task of “concentrating the Palestinian population in a locked city where they would be let in but not let out”.
For now, Rafah, which was once home to an estimated 275,000 people, lies largely in ruins. The scale of Israeli destruction since April this year is particularly apparent when examining specific neighbourhoods of Rafah.
Since Israel breached the last ceasefire agreement with Hamas on March 19, its forces have directly targeted several institutions.
Sanad has identified six educational facilities that have been destroyed, including some located in the Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood, west of Rafah City.
However, satellite data shows that several key facilities have been spared; 40 educational institutions – 39 schools and one university – are intact. Eight medical centres also remain standing.
Sanad has concluded that this noticeable pattern of selective destruction strongly suggests that the preservation of these facilities in Rafah is unlikely to be a coincidence.
Rather, it indicates that Israel aims to use these sites in the next phase of its proposed plan to displace the entire population of Gaza to Rafah.
The spared educational and medical buildings already serve as critical humanitarian shelters for tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians.
The war’s initial wave of displacement from northern to southern Gaza resulted in an overwhelming influx of people into the 154 UN facilities across all five governorates of the Gaza Strip, including schools, warehouses and health centres.
According to UNRWA’s Situation Report in January 2024, these facilities were by then sheltering approximately 1.4 million displaced people, an average of 9,000 people per facility, while an additional 500,000 people were receiving support from other services.
The report also notes that in some shelters, the number exceeds 12,000, four times their intended capacity.
According to UNRWA’s latest report on July 5 this year, 1.9 million people remain displaced in Gaza.
Satellite imagery analysis of the Rafah area from May 2024 to May 2025 reveals that Israeli forces carried out a two-phase operation in Rafah, including in areas which had been designated for humanitarian aid distribution.
Phase One began with the launch of a military offensive in May 2024, during which most buildings in targeted zones in most of eastern Rafah and parts of western Rafah were demolished.
Phase Two, which began in April this year, involves the continued demolition of remaining residential buildings. This phase also included land levelling and the construction of access roads to facilitate the operation of these aid centres.
British Israeli analyst Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera that Israel intends to use Rafah “as a staging post to ethnically cleanse, physically remove, as many Palestinians as possible from the landscape”.
The distribution of aid, which is now under the monopoly of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is run by private US contractors guarded by Israeli troops, is also “a premeditated part of a plan of social-demographic engineering to move Palestinians – to relocate, displace and kettle them,” Levy said.
Katz’s announcement came a day after Netanyahu arrived in the US to meet US President Donald Trump, as the latter pushes for a deal to end the war in Gaza and bring back the remaining Hamas-held captives.
Netanyahu stressed his opposition to any deal that would ultimately leave Hamas in power in Gaza. “Twenty living hostages remain and 30 who are fallen. I am determined, we are determined, to bring back all of them,” he told reporters before boarding his plane. He added, however: “We are determined to ensure that Gaza will no longer constitute a threat to Israel.”
“That means one thing: eliminating Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. Hamas will not be there,” he said.
An Israeli negotiating team was in Doha this week for indirect talks with Hamas. Trump said on Tuesday that Israel had accepted the latest ceasefire proposal, which provides for the release, in five separate stages, of 10 living and 18 dead captives, in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire, an influx of humanitarian aid to the Strip and the release of many Palestinian detainees currently held in Israeli prisons.
Hamas gave what it called a “positive” response to the proposal, stressing its reservations about the temporary nature of the proposed truce and making some demands.
Netanyahu’s office called Hamas’s stipulations, concerning aid mechanisms and Israel’s military withdrawal, “unacceptable”.
A sticking point remains Israel’s control of the Morag Corridor, just north of Rafah, which would allow Israel to control and isolate Rafah, facilitating the implementation of the mass expulsion plan.
In his remarks on Monday, Katz said Israel would use a potential 60-day ceasefire to establish the new “humanitarian zone” south of the corridor, and that the army would hold nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s territory.
Gideon Levy, Israeli columnist for Haaretz, told Al Jazeera negotiations were unlikely to result in more than a temporary ceasefire, whith the release of Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners, as “Netanyahu doesn’t want an end to the war.”
While Trump could pressure his ally into a permanent deal, the US president does not seem inclined to pull his weight, observers say.
“The end game is an ethnic cleansing,” Levy said. “Will it be implemented? I have my doubts.
“But they are already preparing the area, and if the world is passive and the US gives its green light, it might work.”
The US and other Western countries have been reducing their funding, prioritising their defence spending instead.
The plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh could rapidly deteriorate further unless more funding can be secured for critical assistance services, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Bangladesh has registered its biggest influx of Myanmar’s largest Muslim minority over the past 18 months since a mass exodus from an orchestrated campaign of death, rape and persecution nearly a decade ago by Myanmar’s military.
“There is a huge gap in terms of what we need and what resources are available. These funding gaps will affect the daily living of Rohingya refugees as they depend on humanitarian support on a daily basis for food, health and education,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Babar Baloch told reporters in Geneva on Friday.
The humanitarian sector has been roiled by funding reductions from major donors, led by the United States under President Donald Trump and other Western countries, as they prioritise defence spending prompted by growing concerns over Russia and China.
Baloch added: “With the acute global funding crisis, the critical needs of both newly arrived refugees and those already present will be unmet, and essential services for the whole Rohingya refugee population are at risk of collapsing unless additional funds are secured.”
If not enough funding is secured, health services will be severely disrupted by September, and by December, essential food assistance will stop, said the UNHCR, which says that its appeal for $255m has only been 35 percent funded.
In March, the World Food Programme announced that “severe funding shortfalls” for Rohingya were forcing a cut in monthly food vouchers from $12.50 to $6 per person.
More than one million Rohingya have been crammed into camps in southeastern Bangladesh, the world’s largest refugee settlement. Most fled the brutal crackdown in 2017 by Myanmar’s military, although some have been there for longer.
These camps cover an area of just 24 square kilometres (nine square miles) and have become “one of the world’s most densely populated places”, said Baloch.
Continued violence and persecution against the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority in mainly Buddhist Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, have kept forcing thousands to seek protection across the border in Bangladesh, according to the UNHCR. At least 150,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh over the past 18 months.
The Rohingya refugees also face institutionalised discrimination in Myanmar and most are denied citizenship.
“Targeted violence and persecution in Rakhine State and the ongoing conflict in Myanmar have continued to force thousands of Rohingya to seek protection in Bangladesh,” said Baloch. “This movement of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, spread over months, is the largest from Myanmar since 2017, when some 750,000 fled the deadly violence in their native Rakhine State.”
Baloch also hailed Muslim-majority Bangladesh for generously hosting Rohingya refugees for generations.
Athens warns it will now arrest people entering Greece without authorisation from North Africa.
Greece has suspended asylum applications for people arriving by sea for three months.
That has come about after a large rise in the number of people crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to the Greek island of Crete.
Athens wants to stop their boats from even entering Greek waters.
Human rights groups said denying them asylum is against international law.
So can a change in policy really stop people heading to Europe? Are North African countries able to help in reducing the number of boats? And what are the likely outcomes of this suspension?
Presenter: Adrian Finighan
Guests:
Eleni Spathana – lawyer with Refugee Support Aegean and author of Legal Assistance for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Greece
Amine Snoussi – political analyst and journalist
Marianna Karakoulaki – researcher at Birmingham University focusing on forced migration on Europe’s Eastern Mediterranean migratory route
The United Kingdom and France are close to a new agreement aimed at preventing tens of thousands of migrants from crossing the English Channel from France in small boats, UK media reported on Thursday.
French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in London on Tuesday for a three-day visit, marking the first state visit by a European leader since Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Here is all we know about the “one-in-one-out” migrant deal being discussed during a bilateral summit between Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London.
The deal is aimed at deterring migrants from making dangerous trips across the English Channel from France to the UK in small boats. This year so far, more than 20,000 people have undertaken this journey.
At the start of the summit with Macron on Thursday, Starmer said the two must “apply our collective strength and leadership” to the challenges of undocumented migration.
“We all agree that the situation in the Channel cannot go on as it is so we’re bringing new tactics into play and a new intent to tackle illegal migration and break the business model of the criminal gangs.”
Many migrants without visas or permits departing France by sea attempt to cross to the UK in small, inflatable boats. They frequently pay large sums of money to gangs who arrange the boats in northern France. Journeys can be incredibly dangerous and people have died making the crossing.
Under a new agreement, France would agree to take back asylum seekers who have crossed over to the UK and who cannot prove a family connection to the UK. For each migrant France takes back, the UK would grant asylum to one migrant from France who can prove a family connection to the UK.
During the initial stages of the agreement, details of which were reported by French newspaper Le Monde, the UK would initially send about 50 migrants to France per week. Le Monde also reported that the UK would only be able to return 2,600 migrants in a single year.
The UK press quoted a government source on Thursday that plans would be scaled up if the initial scheme is successful.
Both France and the UK have laid the blame on each other.
One of France’s main criticisms of the UK is that it attracts migrants without visas because UK laws are too lenient or not adequately enforced. In his speech to Parliament during his state visit on Tuesday, Macron said that one-third of all migrants arriving in France intend to move on to the UK.
During negotiations with the UK 18 months ago when he was interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, France’s current justice minister, said: “Britain must do something to make itself less attractive and change the rules of their labour market because you can work without papers in the UK,” he said.
The UK disputes this, saying people are drawn to it because of family or diaspora ties, as well as many being able to speak English. Instead, some politicians in the UK have blamed France for not policing its northern shores enough. However, Starmer is also expected to unveil new plans to crack down harder on illegal work in the UK.
France, in turn, says it is making huge efforts to deter migrant departures from northern beaches and to take action against people-smuggling gangs.
The deal is being discussed because of the rising number of unauthorised migrants arriving from France to the UK, Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, told Al Jazeera.
Just one year since Starmer’s Labour party won a landslide election, the prime minister’s popularity has tanked in the UK – in large part because of the failure to stop undocumented migration – while support for the far-right, anti-migration Reform UK party has soared.
In particular, Reform’s manifesto pledges to clamp down on migrants coming to the UK in small boats. It states: “Illegal migrants who come to the UK will be detained and deported. And if needed, migrants in small boats will be picked up and taken back to France.”
The Conservative Party, which was in power before Starmer won last year’s general election, pledged to impose a binding cap for legal migration and to deport asylum seekers who arrive by irregular means to Rwanda for processing and potential resettlement. Labour scrapped this plan as soon as it came to power.
As of July 7, immigration and asylum stand as the most significant issue in the UK, at 51 percent, according to polling by YouGov.
According to commentary in UK media, Starmer’s meeting with Macron also holds symbolic significance, as it allows the British PM to show that he has been able to maintain a good relationship with his main European partners since he negotiated a “reset” trade deal with the EU in May.
This year, 21,117 people crossed the English Channel from France to the UK in small boats as of July 6, according to UK government data. This was a 56 percent increase in the number of people crossing in small boats during the same period in 2024.
In the whole of 2024, nearly 37,000 people crossed the English Channel in small boats, bringing the weekly average to about 700 arrivals.
In the past year, 73 people have died trying to cross the English Channel, the highest number recorded in one year so far, according to data by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental organisation within the United Nations.
Small boat arrivals made up one-third of all asylum applications in 2024, according to an analysis by the Migration Observatory based on statistics from the UK Home Office.
Walsh told Al Jazeera that people take the risk to cross the Channel for a wide range of reasons. “One is the presence of family members, friends, and members of their community already in the UK,” he said.
He explained that because the UK is no longer part of the EU following Brexit, it does not have access to the bloc’s asylum fingerprint database any more. Therefore, British authorities cannot know if people who arrive in small boats have already claimed asylum in an EU country.
“If it did, the UK would be able to dismiss the claims,” he said. “The UK is also no longer a part of the Dublin system that would allow for such asylum claimants to be returned to the EU. Migrants understand this, so view reaching the UK as giving them another chance at securing residence in the UK.”
The Dublin regulation – the framework for the EU’s rules on asylum seekers – establishes the criteria that determine which EU member state is responsible for examining asylum applications submitted by someone who is originally from a third country.
Between 2018 and 2024, 68 percent of asylum applications from migrants who arrived in small boats were granted in the UK. This was higher than the grant rate for asylum applications generally, which was 57 percent for the same duration. This may be another reason people are attracted to the UK, experts say.
In March 2023, the UK, under former Conservative PM Rishi Sunak, signed a three-year deal with France, under which the UK agreed to pay France 480 million pounds ($650m) to tighten its border patrols and surveillance.
Under this deal, France agreed to deploy 500 officers and provide a new detention centre in France, which would be operational by the end of 2026. France also agreed to increase funding for stricter enforcement, without specifying the amount of money.
Separately, in June this year, France agreed to come up with a plan to intercept small boats heading to the UK, for the first time, expanding its navy with six patrol boats that will rescue migrants but also intercept them from heading to the UK.
Paris has agreed to do this for boats which are within 300 metres (1,000ft) from the French shore, and has asked the UK for extra funding to fund the police and equipment to enforce these interceptions, according to UK media.
French police have recently taken to damaging the small boats, slashing their rubber frames with knives. The French Interior Ministry told The Associated Press that the police had not been ordered to do this, however.
Since an average of 700 migrants enter the UK by small boat each week, if the UK government sends an average of 50 people back to France per week, that would amount to just one in 14 being returned.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp of the opposition Conservative Party told The Times newspaper: “This deal will mean that 94 percent of illegal migrants crossing the Channel will get to stay. That is pathetic and will not deter anyone. By contrast, the Rwanda deterrent would have seen 100 percent of illegal migrants removed and that would have worked to deter people crossing the Channel. Keir Starmer’s failure continues.”
The plan could potentially face a legal challenge under the UN Refugee Convention, which mandates asylum seekers’ rights to request protection.
French officials are also critical of the deal, cautious it could result in France becoming a “return hub” for migrants that the UK refuses to accept. “We are putting ourselves into the hands of the British without minimal reciprocal elements,” an unnamed French official involved in the talks told Le Monde.
The policy could also provide ammunition against Macron for his right-wing political critics, who may question why he has agreed to take back migrants wanting to live in Britain.
The UK is not subject to the EU’s Dublin regulations, while France is. This makes the status of migrants returning from Britain to France unclear, causing concern among other European nations, who are upset with France for bilaterally negotiating the deal without consulting the EU.
“Why should other Europeans be obliged to take these returns under EU, Dublin rules when they result from French obligation under a bilateral deal with the UK, a non-EU member, that France negotiated without asking us?” The Times quoted an unnamed EU diplomat as saying on Thursday.
A deal is also opposed by the southern European countries of Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain, who have been receiving unauthorised migrants at an increasing rate, the Financial Times reported. These countries are concerned that if migrants are sent back to France from the UK, they may try to enter southern Europe from France instead.
As the 2000s came to a close, the immigrant population multiplied by more than fivefold in Spain, Italy and Greece, according to a 2016 research article written by scholars from the University of Liege in Belgium.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said on Wednesday during Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament that the UK must refuse to accept “undocumented males” coming in small boats as part of a deal with France. Farage said Starmer should not bow to an “increasingly arrogant, anti-Brexit French president”. Starmer responded, saying Farage’s approach is to “break everything and claim that’s how you fix things”.
Weighing the viability of an agreement between Paris and London, Walsh said: “A returns deal may have an impact if it affects enough people. We don’t know how many people could plausibly be returned to France under this deal, but there’s a risk that if an insufficiently low share of individuals are returned, then people wishing to reach the UK by small boat may see the risk of return as another risk worth taking – alongside the much greater risk of getting in a small boat.”
The UN says almost half a million Afghans have left Iran in just a month, as Iranian authorities continue a mass deportation drive of undocumented migrants. Iranian authorities have accused some Afghans of spying for Israel and say undocumented migrants present a security threat.
Published On 8 Jul 20258 Jul 2025
Berlin, Germany – In 1979, Kien Nghi Ha lived in Hanoi with his parents, who worked as electricians at a power plant, and his 12-year-old sister in a one-bedroom apartment.
They shared the toilet and an outdoor kitchen area along with their neighbours. One of them, an elderly woman, would sometimes look after Ha, then seven years old, and his sister.
He remembers the cool, smooth tiled floor offering comfort during the blistering summer heat. He would lie on it listening to the lively street noise and occasional sound of a tram beyond a green steel entrance door.
Four years earlier, in 1975, North Vietnamese communist forces had defeated United States-aligned fighters in South Vietnam to take the whole country under a one-party system that remains in power today.
Ha was part of an ethnically Chinese mixed Hoa Kieu minority. Communities like his, especially in the early post-war years, felt vulnerable.
He remembers how children turned away from him after Vietnam invaded Cambodia, then an ally of China at that time in 1978, because of his heritage.
“Some even threw stones at me. This was very shocking, and I didn’t understand at that time what was going on,” he said.
The family decided to leave. His parents sold their valuables and embarked on a dangerous and costly trip by boat to Hong Kong. Despite no guarantees of safety, an estimated two million people would ultimately leave this way.
At that time, those who feared for their future under the new Communist authorities could choose to resettle in one of three countries – West Germany, Australia or the United States.
The choice was not available for long. When his uncle left Vietnam just three months later, people were only allowed to migrate to the US.
Ha’s parents opted for West Germany as they believed it offered a better work-life balance than the US.
The fractures in Vietnam mirrored divisions in Germany, with North Vietnam backed by the USSR-aligned East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and the capitalist West Germany supporting South Vietnam.
After arriving in Hong Kong, the family travelled by plane to Frankfurt and then on to Tegel airport in West Berlin, where journalists were waiting, eager to document the country welcoming so-called “boat people”.
“I don’t recall much from the arrival, but I do remember many journalists there wanting to take pictures of us,” Ha said.
The family were provided an apartment within a social housing complex where thousands of people lived near the Berlin Wall on the west side. His father became a transport worker, while his mother was a cleaner in a children’s nursery.
Compared with other social housing at the time, Ha says, the flat was in good condition, with central heating and individual toilets.
But the transition was not easy. Ha felt isolated as one of the only children from a minority background in his primary school.
Within months of the war’s end, Vietnam signed diplomatic relations with the GDR, paving a different kind of path for Huong Mai to fly overseas a few years later.
At 21, she left Hanoi for Moscow and then travelled to Schonefeld airport in East Berlin. She was among the first groups of contract workers and was soon employed at a factory that made drinking glasses.
Now aged 64, Mai has a 27-year-old son and runs a textile shop in the town where she has lived since she arrived in the GDR.
On April 30, Vietnam marked 50 years since the end of the war. For the large Vietnamese-German diaspora, who arrived as refugees and contract workers, this year’s milestones have stirred a sense of reflection.
Mai said she felt joy on the anniversary.
“My father resisted against the French colonialists, and then my older brother fought against the Americans. So, for me, the end of this war is very meaningful because of the blood that was shed by my family in all of these wars,” she said.
Her brother followed in her footsteps, arriving in Germany in the 1990s alone. His family joined him two decades later, in 2009.
His daughter, 26-year-old Dieu Ly Hoang, now lives in Prenzlauer Berg, which is coincidentally the same neighbourhood as Ha. It is a sought-after area of the German capital, formerly in the GDR, now home to cosy cafes, posh restaurants, yoga studios and affluent expatriate families where English is heard on the streets more often than German.
“It’s been a very important aspect for me to see what my family went through, and how resilient they have been. I know I’m very lucky not to have experienced an evacuation and I can’t imagine what it was like for my grandparents,” Ly said, as she recalled hearing stories about the wartime rations of rice.
“I acknowledge the sacrifices they made to migrate for a better life so that I could be born and live in peace,” said Ly, an art historian.
Ha, now 53 and a father to two sons, is a postdoctoral researcher in the Asian German diaspora at the University of Tubingen and holds a PhD in cultural studies. Friendly, open and knowledgeable of the complex history he is a part of, Ha also said the commemorative events have felt significant.
“There’s an intellectual and cultural discussion going on through which we are trying to make sense of this history and what this history means for us living in the German-Vietnamese diaspora,” he said.
“Questions pop up in private and public conversations, articles, books, and artworks. And knowing more about this history will improve our sense of self in German society, because we are able to discover more about a past that we, the younger generations, didn’t experience on a personal level. This allows us to connect the past with the present.”
An estimated 35,000 refugees arrived in West Germany in 1979, while 70,000 contract workers began to arrive in the GDR in 1980.
When Germany unified in 1990, it brought together, at least physically, two communities.
“In the GDR, people were proud to show international solidarity, and this went hand in hand with hatred of the capitalist West, while the West German government saw the Vietnam War as part of the global struggle against communism,” explained German historian Andreas Margara.
Ly said some of her relatives still mention it when they hear a southern Vietnamese accent.
“They do not become stressed nor do they act differently, but they notice the accent verbally, like ‘Oh, this person is from the south’. They do not go further into details, but I can feel a certain differentiation there because there is this history there. My parents’ generation, including people like war veterans, don’t have the spaces in the diaspora to meet, share their experiences and understand each other more,” she said. “Unified Germany, though, can be a space for more reconciliation.”
She added that her generation has “more chances and spaces for dialogue” as she recalled recently meeting a Vietnamese German art history student and having plenty about which to talk.
Mai agreed that there are not many opportunities in her life to meet southerners, yet she feels no animosity.
“Even though Vietnam has been damaged a lot, we are all Vietnamese and came to Germany to build a better life for ourselves,” she said.
Thousands are being forced to go back to Afghanistan as Tehran tightens controls on immigration.
For decades, tens of thousands of Afghans – who have fled war and poverty and sought a better future – have crossed into neighbouring Iran.
Tehran has largely been lenient towards members of this community. But in recent years, Iranians seem to have grown tired of hosting them – and sentiment towards foreign nationals has hardened.
The Iranian government has responded by expelling undocumented people. Those being forced out have no choice but to return to the country they escaped from.
While the Taliban government is welcoming returning Afghans, what kind of life awaits them, and what can the international community do to help?
James Bays
Arafat Jamal – Afghanistan representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Orzala Nemat – Activist for the rights of Afghan women and director of the Development Research Group, a UK-based consultancy
Hassan Ahmadian – Assistant professor of West Asian Studies at the University of Tehran
Afghans given Sunday deadline amid concerns over security after conflict with Israel, but humanitarian groups warn that mass deportations could further destabilise Afghanistan.
Millions of Afghan migrants and refugees in Iran have been asked to leave or face arrest as a deadline set by the government comes to an end.
Sunday’s target date neared amid public concerns over security in the aftermath of the 12-day conflict with Israel, which the United States joined with air strikes on Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities.
But humanitarian organisations warned that mass deportations could further destabilise Afghanistan, one of the world’s most impoverished nations. Iran is home to an estimated 4 million Afghan migrants and refugees, and many have lived there for decades.
In 2023, Tehran launched a campaign to expel foreigners it said were living in the country “illegally”. In March, the Iranian government ordered that Afghans without the right to remain should leave voluntarily by Sunday or face expulsion.
Since then, more than 700,000 Afghans have left, and hundreds of thousands of others face expulsion. More than 230,000 departed in June alone, the United Nations International Organization for Migration said.
The government has denied targeting Afghans, who have fled their homeland to escape war, poverty and Taliban rule.
Batoul Akbari, a restaurant owner, told Al Jazeera that Afghans living in Tehran were hurt by “anti-Afghan sentiment”, adding that it was heartbreaking to see “people sent away from the only home they have ever known”.
“Being born in Iran gives us the feeling of having two homelands,” Akbari said. “Our parents are from Afghanistan, but this is what we’ve always known as home.”
Mohammad Nasim Mazaheri, a student whose family had to leave Iran, agreed: “The deportations have torn families apart.”
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that Iran deported more than 30,000 Afghans on average each day during the war with Israel, up from about 2,000 earlier.
“We have always striven to be good hosts, but national security is a priority, and naturally, illegal nationals must return,” Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Tuesday.
Late last month, the UNHCR said, of the 1.2 million returning Afghans, more than half had come from Iran after its government set its deadline on March 20.
“They are coming in buses, and sometimes, five buses arrive at one time with families and others, and the people are let out of the bus, and they are simply bewildered, disoriented and tired and hungry as well,” Arafat Jamal, the UNHCR representative in Afghanistan said as he described the scene at a border crossing.
“This has been exacerbated by the war, but I must say it has been part of an underlying trend that we have seen of returns from Iran, some of which are voluntary, but a large portion were also deportations.”
Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said Afghans have increasingly been blamed for economic hardships, shortages and social issues in Iran.
“These accusations have been fuelled by political rhetoric and social media campaigns following 12 days of conflict between Iran and Israel and claims that Israel has recruited Afghans as spies,” he said.
Millions of Sudanese who have fled to neighbouring countries face the risk of hunger.
The World Food Programme has sounded an alarm, saying it may have to reduce its aid operations for Sudanese refugees because of cutbacks in its funding.
Four million refugees are in countries neighbouring Sudan after fleeing from the ongoing civil war, and most of them rely on aid.
But that was put in jeopardy after United States President Donald Trump’s administration slashed overseas aid budgets this year.
The European Union, the United Kingdom and Germany have also cut their foreign aid as some nations switch funding to invest in defence.
So who else can step in to fill the gap?
And what will happen to the people who depend on aid to survive?
Presenter: James Bays
Guests
On Friday, June 13, when Israeli missiles began raining down on Tehran, Shamsi was reminded once again just how vulnerable she and her family are.
The 34-year-old Afghan mother of two was working at her sewing job in north Tehran. In a state of panic and fear, she rushed back home to find her daughters, aged five and seven, huddled beneath a table in horror.
Shamsi fled Taliban rule in Afghanistan just a year ago, hoping Iran would offer safety. Now, undocumented and terrified, she finds herself caught in yet another dangerous situation – this time with no shelter, no status, and no way out.
“I escaped the Taliban but bombs were raining over our heads here,” Shamsi told Al Jazeera from her home in northern Tehran, asking to be referred to by her first name only, for security reasons. “We came here for safety, but we didn’t know where to go.”
Shamsi, a former activist in Afghanistan, and her husband, a former soldier in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power in 2021, fled to Iran on a temporary visa, fearful of reprisals from the Taliban over their work. But they have been unable to renew their visas because of the cost and the requirement to exit Iran and re-enter through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan – a journey that would likely be too dangerous.
Life in Iran has not been easy. Without legal residency, Shamsi has no protection at work, no bank account, and no access to aid. “There was no help from Iranians, or from any international organisation,” she said.
Internet blackouts in Tehran have made it hard to find information or contact family.
“Without a driver’s licence, we can’t move around. Every crossroad in Tehran is heavily inspected by police,” she said, noting that they managed to get around restrictions to buy food before Israel began bombing, but once that started it became much harder.
Iran hosts an estimated 3.5 million refugees and people in refugee-like situations, including some 750,000 registered Afghans. But more than 2.6 million are undocumented individuals. Since the Taliban’s return to power and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, thousands of Afghans, including activists, journalists, former soldiers, and other vulnerable people, have crossed into Iran seeking refuge.
Tehran province alone reportedly hosts 1.5 million Afghan refugees – the majority of them undocumented – and as Israel targeted sites in and around the capital, attacking civilian and military locations during the 12-day conflict, many Afghans were starkly reminded of their extreme vulnerability – unprotected and unable to access emergency assistance, or even reliable information during air raids as the internet was shut down for large periods of time.
While many fled Tehran for the north of Iran, Afghan refugees like Shamsi and her family had nowhere to go.
On the night of June 22, an explosion shook her neighbourhood, breaking the windows of the family’s apartment. “I was awake until 3am, and just an hour after I fell asleep, another blast woke me up,” she said.
An entire residential apartment was levelled near her building. “I prepared a bag with my children’s main items to be ready if something happens to our building.”
The June 23 ceasefire brokered by Qatar and the US came as a huge relief, but now there are other problems: Shamsi’s family is almost out of money. Her employer, who used to pay her in cash, has left the city and won’t answer her calls. “He’s disappeared,” she said. “When I [previously] asked for my unpaid wages, he just said: ‘You’re an Afghan migrant, get out, out, out.’”
For all Afghans trapped in Iran – both those forced to flee and those who stayed in their homes – the 12-day conflict with Israel has sharply reawakened feelings of trauma and displacement.
Furthermore, according to the Iranian health authorities, three Afghan migrants – identified as Hafiz Bostani, Abdulwali and Habibullah Jamshidi – were among the 610 people killed in the recent strikes.
On June 18, 18-year-old Afghan labourer Abdulwali was killed and several others were injured in an Israeli strike on their construction site in the Tehranpars area of Tehran. According to the victim’s father, Abdulwali left his studies in Afghanistan about six months ago to work in Iran to feed his family. In a video widely shared by Abdulwali’s friends, his colleagues at the construction site can be heard calling to him to leave the building as loud explosions echo in the background.
Other Afghans are still missing since the Israeli strikes. Hakimi, an elderly Afghan man from Takhar province in Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that he hadn’t heard from three of his grandsons in Iran for four days. “They were stuck inside a construction site in central Tehran with no food,” he said.
All he knows is that they retreated to the basement of the unfinished apartment building they were working on when they heard the sound of bombs, he explained. The shops nearby were closed, and their Iranian employer has fled the city without paying wages.
Even if they have survived, he added, they are undocumented. “If they get out, they will get deported by police,” Hakimi said.
During the conflict, UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett urged all parties to protect Afghan migrants in Iran, warning of serious risks to their safety and calling for immediate humanitarian safeguards.
Afghan activist Laila Forugh Mohammadi, who now lives outside the country, is using social media to raise awareness about the dire conditions Afghans are facing in Iran. “People can’t move, can’t speak,” she said. “Most have no legal documents, and that puts them in a dangerous position where they can’t even retrieve unpaid wages from fleeing employers.”
She also flagged that amid the Iran-Israel conflict, there is no government body supporting Afghans. “There’s no bureaucracy to process their situation. We dreaded an escalation in the violence between Iran and Israel for the safety of our people,” she said.
In the end, those who did manage to evacuate from the most dangerous areas in Iran mostly did so with the help of Afghan organisations.
The Afghan Women Activists’ Coordinating Body (AWACB), part of the European Organisation for Integration, helped hundreds of women – many of whom fled the Taliban because of their activist work – and their families to flee. They relocated from high-risk areas like Tehran, Isfahan and Qom – the sites of key nuclear facilities which Israel and the US both targeted – to safer cities such as Mashhad in the northeast of the country. The group also helped with communicating with families in Afghanistan during the ongoing internet blackouts in Iran.
“Our capacity is limited. We can only support official members of AWACB,” said Dr Patoni Teichmann, the group’s founder, speaking to Al Jazeera before the ceasefire. “We have evacuated 103 women out of our existing 450 members, most of whom are Afghan women’s rights activists and protesters who rallied against the women’s education ban and fled Afghanistan.”
Iran recently announced plans to deport up to two million undocumented Afghans, but during the 12-day conflict, some took the decision to move back anyway despite the dangers and hardships they may face there.
World Vision Afghanistan reported that, throughout the 12-day war, approximately 7,000 Afghans were crossing daily from Iran into Afghanistan via the Islam Qala border in Herat. “People are arriving with only the clothes on their backs,” said Mark Cal, a field representative. “They’re traumatised, confused, and returning to a homeland still in economic and social freefall.”
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has voiced grave concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation for Afghans in Iran, adding that it is monitoring reports that people are on the move within Iran and that some are leaving for neighbouring countries.
Even as Israeli strikes came to a halt, tensions remain high, and the number of Afghans fleeing Iran is expected to rise.
But for many, there is nowhere left to go.
Back in northern Tehran, Shamsi sits beside her daughter watching an Iranian news channel. “We came here for safety,” she says softly. Asked what she would do if the situation worsens, Shamsi doesn’t hesitate: “I will stay here with my family. I can’t go back to the Taliban.”
This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.
Sameer tells Al Jazeera,“Scenes of those things which I witnessed had a very bad effect on me and still when I remember, it [makes] me upset.”
Research with refugee children finds the prevalence of emotional disorders to be generally higher than in non-refugee children.
According to one study, the overall prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was 23 percent (one in four) in refugee children, that of anxiety disorders was 16 percent (one in six) and that of depression was 14 percent (one in seven).
“One of the things about trauma is it keeps you on this very high state of alert,” says Trickey. “And I think those without refugee status, they’re living this constant fear of being returned to the place they fled.”
But not all children experience trauma the same way, Trickey adds.
“A more important risk factor, a predictor of PTSD, is not how big the event was, but it’s what you make of it. Were you afraid? Did you think someone was gonna die?
“And different children will find different things frightening. There’ll be some people that actually experience the most awful things and seem pretty unaffected, and they do OK. There’ll be some people that seem to be doing OK, and then they have, we can sometimes call it, latent vulnerability. And later on in life, that’s when they develop difficulties.”
Ventevogel tells Al Jazeera that often, in younger children, there may be more issues with withdrawal, because they cannot verbalise how they feel, for example where “a child withdraws, stops playing with other children, or a child shows in play, in the way the child enacts issues, that there is something not OK.
“It’s not diagnostic, but this can be an indication that there is something deeper,” Ventevogel says.
Trickey explains that during a trauma-focused therapy session, a boy he was working with described what he was going through by comparing his brain to a wastepaper bin stuffed with “scrunched-up pieces of paper” that represent “all the bad things” he had been through.
“And as I walk to school, they fall in front of my eyes. And when I lie down and go to sleep, they fall into my dreams,” the boy told him. “But when I come and see you, we take them out of the bin, and we unscrunch them. Then we read them through carefully, then we fold them up neatly, and then we put them back in the bin. But because they’re folded up neatly, it means they don’t fall out the top, and I’ve got more room in my head to think about other things.”
For Sameer, his ability to cope came down to his mindset. “With the passage of time, I became used to the situation and I feel confident and fine now. And I hope, whatever problems or difficulties I face in the future, I will overcome and hopefully things will get normal.”
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – The sound of children at play echoes through the verdant lanes of one of the dozens of refugee camps on the outskirts of Cox’s Bazar, a densely populated coastal town in southeast Bangladesh.
Just for a moment, the sounds manage to soften the harsh living conditions faced by the more than one million people who live here in the world’s largest refugee camp.
Described as the most persecuted people on the planet, the Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh may now be one of the most forgotten populations in the world, eight years after being ethnically cleansed from their homes in neighbouring Myanmar by a predominantely Buddhist military regime.
“Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in desperate need,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a visit to the sprawling camps in May.
The UN chief’s visit followed United States President Donald Trump’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has stalled several key projects in the camps, and the United Kingdom announcing cuts to foreign aid in order to increase defence spending.
Healthcare in the camps has suffered as the severe blows to foreign aid bite.
Seated outside his makeshift bamboo hut, Jahid Alam told Al Jazeera how, before being forced to become a refugee, he had worked as a farmer and also fished for a living in the Napura region of his native Myanmar. It was back then, in 2016, that he first noticed his leg swell up for no apparent reason.
“I was farming and suddenly felt this intense urge to itch my left leg,” Alam said. “My leg soon turned red and began swelling up. I rushed home and tried to put some ice on it. But it didn’t help.”
A local doctor prescribed an ointment, but the itch continued, and so did the swelling.
He soon found it difficult to stand or walk and could no longer work, becoming dependent on his family members.
A year later, when Myanmar’s military began burning Rohingya homes in his village and torturing the women, he decided to send his family to Bangladesh.
Alam stayed behind to look after the cows on his land. But the military soon threatened him into leaving too and joining his family in neighbouring Bangladesh.
The 53-year-old has been treated by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, in the Kutupalong region of Cox’s Bazar since arriving, but amputation of his leg seems likely. While some doctors have said he has Elephantiasis – an infection that causes enlargement and swelling of limbs – a final diagnosis is yet to be made.
Along with the disease, Alam has to also deal with stigma due to his disability.
“They call me ‘langhra’(lame) when they see I can’t walk properly,” he said.
But, he adds: “If God has given me this disease and disability, he also gave me the opportunity to come to this camp and try to recover. In the near future I know I can start a new and better life.”
Seated in a dimly lit room in a small hut about a 10-minute walk from Alam’s shelter, Jahena Begum hopes aid organisations will continue supporting the camps and particularly people with disabilities.
Her daughter Sumaiya Akter, 23, and sons, Harez, 19, and Ayas, 21, are blind and have a cognitive disability that prevents them from speaking clearly. They are largely unaware of their surroundings.
“Their vision slowly began fading as they became teenagers,” Begum says.
“It was very difficult to watch, and healthcare facilities in Myanmar could not help,” said the 50-year-old mother as she patted her daughter’s leg.
The young girl giggled, unaware of what was going on around her.
Begum’s family arrived in Cox’s Bazar about nine months ago after the military in Myanmar burned their house down.
“We made it to the camps with the help of relatives. But life has been very hard for me,” said Begum, telling how she had single-handedly brought up her children since her husband’s death eight years ago.
Doctors from MSF have given her children spectacles and have begun running scans to understand the root cause of their disability.
“Right now, they express everything by making sounds. But the one word they speak, which is ‘Amma’, meaning mother, shows me that they at least recognise me,” Begum said.
“The word ‘Amma’ gives me hope and strength to continue trying to treat them. I want a better future for my children.”
Clad in a blue and pink striped collared shirt and a striped brown longyi – the cloth woven around the waist and worn by men and women in Myanmar – Anowar Shah told of fleeing Myanmar to save his life, on top of losing a limb to a mine blast.
Shah said he was collecting firewood in his hometown Labada Prian Chey in Myanmar when his leg was blown off by the landmine last year.
Myanmar is among the world’s deadliest countries for landmine and unexploded ordnance casualties, according to a 2024 UN report, with more than 1,000 victims recorded in 2023 alone – a number that surpassed all other nations.
“Those were the longest, most painful days of my life,” said the 25-year-old Shah, who now needs crutches to get around.
“Losing my leg shattered everything. I went from being someone who provided and protected, to someone who depends on others just to get through the day. I can’t move freely, can’t work, can’t even perform simple tasks alone,” he said.
“I feel like I’ve become a burden to the people I love. The pain isn’t just physical – it’s emotional, it’s deep. I keep asking myself, ‘Why did this happen to me?’”
More than 30 refugees in the camps in Bangladesh have lost limbs in landmine explosions, leaving them disabled and dependent on others.
All parties to the armed conflict in Myanmar have used landmines in some capacity, said John Quinley, director of rights organisation Fortify Rights, in Myanmar.
“We know the Myanmar junta has used landmines over many years to bolster their bases. They also lay them in civilian areas around villages and towns that they have occupied and fled,” he told Al Jazeera.
Abdul Hashim, 25, who resides in Camp 21 in Cox’s Bazar, described how stepping on a landmine in February 2024 “drastically altered his life”.
“I have become dependent on others for even the simplest daily tasks. Once an active contributor to my family, I now feel like a burden,” he said.
Since arriving in the camp, Hashim has been in a rehabilitation programme at the Turkish Field Hospital where he receives medication and physical rehabilitation that involves balance exercises, stump care, and hygiene education.
He has also been assessed for a prosthetic limb which currently costs about 50,000 Bangladeshi Taka ($412). The cost for such limbs is borne by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
“Despite the trauma and hardship, I hold onto some hope. I dream of receiving a prosthetic leg soon, which would allow me to regain some independence and find work to support my family,” Hashim said.
So far, a total of 14 prosthetic limbs have been distributed and fitted for camp inhabitants by the aid group Humanity & Inclusion, who have expertise in producing the limbs in orthotic workshops outside the refugee camps.
Both Hashim and Shah are a part of the organisation’s rehabilitation programme, which has been providing gait training to help them adapt to the future, regular use of prosthetic limbs.
Seeking to ensure refugees in the camps are well supported and can live better lives after fleeing persecution, aid workers are currently having to make tough decisions due to foreign aid cuts.
“We are having to decide between feeding people and providing education and healthcare due to aid cuts,” a Bangladeshi healthcare worker who requested anonymity, for fear his comment could jeopardise future aid from the US, told Al Jazeera.
Quinley of Fortify Rights pointed out that while there are huge funding gaps because of the aid cuts, the Rohingya refugee response should not fall on any one government and should be a collective regional responsibility.
“There needs to be a regional response, particularly for countries in Southeast Asia, to give funding,” he said.
“Countries connected to the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) in the Middle East could also give a lot more meaningful support,” he said.
He also recommended working with local humanitarian partners, “whether it’s Bangladeshi nationals or whether it’s Rohingya refugee groups themselves” since they know how to help their communities the best.
“Their ability to access people that need support is at the forefront, and they should be supported from governments worldwide,” he said.
For the estimated one million refugees in Cox’s Bazar, urgent support is needed at this time, when funds grow ever scarce.
According to a Joint Response Plan drawn up for the Rohingya, in 2024, just 30 percent of funding was received of a total $852.4m that was needed by the refugees.
As of May 2025, against an overall appeal for $934.5m for the refugees, just 15 percent received funding.
Cutting the aid budgets for the camps is a “short-sighted policy”, said Blandine Bouniol, deputy director of advocacy at Humanity & Inclusion humanitarian group.
It will, Bouniol said, “have a devastating impact on people”.
Gilan, Iran – The prospect of war seemed to creep nearer to reality with each passing day, but perhaps few of the millions who have been forced to abandon their homes across Iran in the past week – including myself – could have known this new reality would impose itself so harshly or abruptly.
The first explosions jolted people awake in Tehran shortly after 3am on June 13, when a large number of Israeli fighter jets and drones attacked dozens of areas across the country, and explosives-laden quadcopters and anti-fortification Spike guided missiles were launched by Israeli agents from inside Iran.
Entire residential buildings were levelled in the capital, military sites and air defence batteries were targeted, and above-ground facilities supporting nuclear enrichment halls buried deep inside mountains in Isfahan province’s Natanz were bombed. Dozens of civilians were killed, as were a large number of top military commanders and nuclear scientists.
Tehran was in shock the first morning after the attacks, as people struggled to process the terrifying news and evaluate their options while the authorities scrambled to mount a concerted response to the surprise hits.
As the attacks came on a Friday morning – the last day of the weekend in Iran – most city streets were eerily quiet in the immediate aftermath, except for those where Israeli bombs had made an impact.
Soon, however, hours-long queues had formed at almost every single fuel station across the sprawling capital, which has a population of nearly 10 million people and holds more than 15 million during busy workdays, as millions also commute from neighbouring cities like Karaj.
I went out to visit a few of the targeted sites in western Tehran: Multiple homes had been destroyed in the Patrice Lumumba neighbourhood, several floors of a 15-storey building providing accommodation for university professors had caved in at Saadat Abad and adjacent buildings were damaged, while the top two floors of another residential building had been completely wiped out in Marzdaran. All were successful targeted assassinations – including of several top nuclear scientists – and many civilians were also killed.
Later that night, Iran’s armed forces began launching hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel in retaliation. Nearly one week on, at least 16 rounds of Iranian strikes have been launched, with no immediate end in sight as Tehran says it will continue to hit back so long as Israel is attacking. Meanwhile, United States President Donald Trump teases triggering an all-out regional war by directly entering the war alongside Israel, which he and Washington’s Western allies already support with cutting-edge munitions, a massive fleet of refuelling planes and intelligence efforts.
For the next few days, the Israeli attacks were ringing out across Tehran and the country during the daytime, terrorising civilians who saw the smoke and heard the explosions get closer to their homes or places of work. Both at home and at Al Jazeera’s Tehran bureau, I heard many explosive impacts, with some of the closer ones only about 2km (1.2 miles) away.
Most of Tehran was shut down after the Israeli attacks ramped up, and the streets and petrol stations were more crowded than ever after Israel and Trump told people to evacuate immediately. The government said metro stations and mosques were opened as 24-hour shelters since it has built no dedicated shelters or come up with any clear security protocols, despite the ever-present threat of war.
On Monday, after three days of evaluating the situation, my family and I decided to join the countless others who had already fled Tehran.
After hurriedly packing some clothes and a few belongings in a suitcase, I drove from my own place to my girlfriend’s house to pick her up at about 4pm. Her parents, who work in healthcare, needed to stay in Tehran that day but they have since left as well, after Israeli air strikes intensified in their neighbourhood.
We then picked up my mother – along with our four cats who have been staying with her – from her home in western Tehran, close to a major road which exits the capital.
Israeli bombs were falling on multiple areas across western Tehran as we scurried to grab the cats and put them in their boxes.
The unmistakable sounds of the explosions, which leave a sickening, sinking sensation in your stomach no matter how many times you hear them, only added to the urgency – especially since the Israeli military had issued a new evacuation threat at about the same time and then bombed the state television headquarters.
We left Tehran with heavy hearts, not knowing when we might return. The buildings were already mostly empty of residents.
The feeling that we may not return to the same intact neighbourhoods was unavoidable, as was the terror we feel for those who wanted to leave but could not, whether because they are nursing a sick family member or because they simply lacked the means to do so. Iran’s ailing economy has been dragged under the weight of years of local mismanagement and US sanctions.
The journey north, which usually takes about four hours, took close to 12. The highways were a sea of vehicles filled with families, pets and belongings. Roadside diners and service areas brimmed with people who had no idea when or how they might return. Many worriedly followed news of the latest air strikes.
Close to our destination in the north of Iran, checkpoints set up by armed and masked security forces made the traffic even worse. They were stopping some vehicles, mostly pick-up trucks, since those are what have been used by Israeli agents to smuggle explosive quadcopters and other weapons inside Iran.
I am writing this from a small but vibrant city in the province of Gilan in northern Iran. The northern provinces, also including Mazandaran and Golestan, are where most Iranians have opted to go. They are relatively close to Tehran, have far fewer places that could be potential targets for the Israeli army, and were already popular travel destinations with a large number of hotels that many have visited before.
Many here have opened their homes to people displaced from other provinces, too. Six million people have entered Mazandaran alone since last week, according to Iran’s deputy police chief, Qasem Rezaei.
The authorities are trying to reassure the population, especially Iranians who have fled to the northern provinces, that the government faces no problems in providing for their basic needs, especially food and fuel.
But in the meantime, 90 million Iranians have been thrown into a state of uncertainty, frustration and anger while trying to maintain hope for a semblance of normal life when the country is not constantly under threat of military action or isolated from the international community.
For ordinary civilians, the situation is seriously compounded by the fact that they have been completely cut off from the internet for days, with internet observatory NetBlocks confirming on Friday that 97 percent of the country’s connectivity was down. Barring a handful of small daily updates gleaned from state media or local sources, Iranians have little idea about the extent of the Israeli military strikes across the country.
The Iranian authorities began imposing internet restrictions from the first day of the Israeli strikes, but increased them as Israel expanded its offensive and a pro-Israeli hacking group also launched cyberattacks.
Several of the country’s top banks have been taken offline as a result of the cyberattacks, as well as Iran’s top cryptocurrency exchange, Nobitex, which said its “hot wallet” had been compromised but promised it would return any lost money.
Iranian officials, who also took the country offline during the deadly nationwide protests in November 2019, claimed disconnecting the internet was necessary to fend off Israeli quadcopters and other projectiles, but gave no timeline as to when they would restore full connectivity.
Iran already has one of the most closed-off and slowed-down internet connections in the world, as almost all major global messaging apps and other services, along with tens of thousands of websites, are blocked and only accessible through workarounds such as virtual private networks (VPNs).
If you are reading this now, it means I managed to find a barely functioning connection to send this out.
The extraordinary story of Eshete, a refugee who escaped war in Ethiopia as a young man and is now a devoted caretaker of a feral cat colony in New York City.
Eshete has become the heart of a close-knit community while living on the streets. Together with neighbours who help feed the cats and look out for him, Eshete’s story reveals a moving portrait of grassroots community care.
The Cat Man Eshete is a documentary film by Laura Checkoway.
‘Brutal funding cuts leave brutal choices,’ says aid chief, as humanitarian appeal slashes and priorities refocused.
The United Nations has announced sweeping cuts to its global humanitarian operations, blaming what it described as the “deepest funding cuts ever” for a drastic scaling back of its aid ambitions.
In a statement released on Monday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it was now appealing for $29bn in aid – down sharply from the $44bn it had requested in December – and would refocus on the most critical emergencies under a “hyper-prioritised” plan.
The move follows a steep decline in funding from key donors, with the United States – historically the largest contributor – having slashed foreign aid under the administration of President Donald Trump.
Other donors have since followed suit, citing global economic uncertainty. So far this year, the UN has received only $5.6bn, a mere 13 percent of what it initially sought.
This comes as humanitarian needs soar in conflict zones, including Sudan, Gaza, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Myanmar.
“Brutal funding cuts leave us with brutal choices,” said undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Tom Fletcher.
“All we ask is 1 percent of what you spent last year on war. But this isn’t just an appeal for money – it’s a call for global responsibility, for human solidarity, for a commitment to end the suffering,” he added.
OCHA said remaining aid efforts would be redirected towards the most urgent crises and aligned with planning already under way for 2025 to ensure maximum impact with limited funds.
“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” Fletcher said. “The math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are given.”
Russia has returned the bodies of 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers to Kyiv, marking one of the largest repatriations of remains since the war began more than three years ago.
The return on Friday was made following an agreement reached during peace talks in Istanbul last month.
However, Moscow has claimed this latest exchange was one-sided, claiming that Ukraine has failed to return the bodies of its fallen soldiers.
“Today, Russia handed over 1,200 bodies of deceased soldiers of the Ukrainian armed forces to Ukraine. Not a single one was handed over to us,” an unnamed source told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky also claimed that Ukraine suddenly postponed the handover of remains and prisoner exchanges on June 7, without offering a public explanation.
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on Friday that forensic experts will now work to identify the remains they received, adding that the bodies were believed to be those of Ukrainian military personnel.
Earlier this week, Russia returned another 1,212 bodies and received just 27 bodies of its own troops in return.
Despite tensions, both sides have agreed in principle to exchange up to 6,000 bodies and prioritise the release of sick and severely wounded prisoners of war, as well as those under the age of 25.
Meanwhile, as the war continues between Russia and Ukraine, the European Union has extended its temporary protection scheme for Ukrainian refugees by another year, allowing them to remain in the bloc until March 2027.
The EU’s move, announced on Friday, comes amid ongoing air raids and strikes across Ukraine, which have displaced millions since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
More than 4.3 million Ukrainians are currently registered under the scheme, with Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic hosting the largest refugee populations.
“While Russia continues to terrorise Ukrainian civilians with indiscriminate air strikes, the EU continues to show its solidarity,” said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s interior minister.
“We will continue to offer protection for millions of Ukrainian refugees for another year.”
Heavy fighting continued across the front line on Friday, with new casualties reported in both Ukraine and Russia.
In Russia’s Belgorod region, a two-year-old boy was killed and two adults, including his grandmother, were wounded in what officials said was a Ukrainian drone strike overnight, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed it had intercepted 260 Ukrainian drones over the past 24 hours, while over the past week, Moscow says its air defences downed a Neptune long-range missile, 18 JDAM guided bombs, nine US-made HIMARS rockets, and 1,582 fixed-wing drones from Ukraine.
In Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian Governor Ivan Fedorov reported one person killed and three injured in Russian shelling, while in Donetsk, Ukrainian Governor Vadym Filashkin said two civilians were killed and five injured across the region.
It comes after the Ukrainian military said it had struck the Rezonit electronics factory near Moscow, triggering explosions. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine later reported 113 Russian assaults across key fronts, including in Lyman, Pokrovsk, Novopavlivka and Kurakhove.