"No One Was Waiting for Us… Not Even Our Homeland"
A Story of Unaccompanied Afghan Women Deported from Iran

Arezo, a 34-year-old unaccompanied woman, is one of the hundreds of women recently deported to Afghanistan.

She says: "I was in Iran for eleven years. My husband was an addict and passed away three years ago. I worked, I took care of my mother and the children myself. But now, with only the clothes on our backs, they threw us here. They said: You're illegal, you have to leave."

Next to her stands Somayeh — a young woman with two small daughters: one six years old and the other only two and a half.

She says: "My husband abandoned us. I used to sew and work to raise these two. I had no support, no income, no security. And now they’ve kicked us out of Iran as well. We slept the first night at customs. I don’t even know where I’ll be tonight."

These mothers are just a few examples of a new wave of deportations of unaccompanied Afghan women from Iran — deportations in which there is no assessment of individual circumstances, no access to legal services, and not even a chance to defend oneself.

This is while, according to the 1951 Geneva Convention and the 1967 Protocol, no asylum seeker should be returned to a country where they face the threat of violence, persecution, or serious human rights violations. This fundamental principle, known as non-refoulement, is clearly stated in international law.

Despite this, Iran has deported tens of thousands of Afghan migrants in recent months — including unaccompanied women and children.

Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and UNHCR have repeatedly warned that this process constitutes a clear violation of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.

Inside Afghanistan, there is no specific support mechanism for returnees. These women, after crossing the border, have no home, no cash assistance, and no psychological services.

One Taliban official in Islam Qala says: "We don’t have enough resources. We house some of them with the help of locals in mosques and hospitals, but their situation is truly critical."

Arezo says at the end: "I never thought I’d be deported from Iran. I never thought my own homeland wouldn’t have a place for me either. I look at my children and just ask: what do we do now? Where do we go?"

And Somayeh, holding her little daughter close to her chest, whispers quietly: "We were just women. Just mothers. But it seems like that is the greatest crime in the world."