Years of Being Left Behind from 'Mehr'

Less than three weeks before the start of the new school year, a group of child rights activists and minority rights advocates have called for the enrollment of Afghan children residing in Iran in schools. A Twitter storm has also been initiated by users, mainly Iranian and Afghan residents in Iran, who are demanding equal rights for Afghan children using the hashtag #ازمهرجانمانند (We Are Left Behind from Mehr). In a directive in 2015, Ayatollah Khamenei announced that no Afghan child, including those who are undocumented and illegally present in Iran, should be deprived of education and all must be registered in Iranian schools. Three months after the launch of this initiative, the Iranian Ministry of Interior announced that Afghan students aged 7 to 18 without legal residency documents would have the opportunity to apply for an educational introduction letter that would allow them to enroll in Iranian schools. Some Afghan children managed to register in schools, but many remained deprived of education. This week's program has addressed the issue of Afghan children's education, featuring two experts: Mehrdad Darvishpour, a sociologist and university professor in Sweden, and Adela Mohseni, a legal expert and children's and women's rights activist from Afghanistan, who has studied in Iran. In this roundtable, we also briefly looked at other ethnic and religious minorities who are deprived of education in Iran.