Country Position Paper: Statelessness in Iran 2. RELEVANT POPULATION DATA Official Language: Estimated Population: Estimated number of stateless people: Estimated number of IDPs: Estimated number of refugees hosted by Iran: Estimated number of refugees from Iran: 1 Persian (Farsi) 82.1 million1 Unknown2 74,0003 979,435 registered, around 1.5-2 mil undocumented (mainly from Afghanistan)4 129,9405 Trading Economics (2018) Iran Population, retrieved from from https://tradingeconomics.com/iran/population The latest census data shows that the population of Iran is 82.1 million; however, there is no accurate data on how many persons are stateless or at risk of statelessness in the country. In addition to the recognised stateless community residing in Iran, the gender discriminatory Nationality Law of Iran increases the risk of statelessness of children born to Iranian mothers and foreign national fathers who are unknown/stateless or unable to pass on their nationality to the child. 2 United States Department of State. (2017). Iran 2017 Human Rights Report. Retrieved from https://www.state.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2019/01/Iran.pdf 3 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. (2019). Iran Country Information. Retrieved from http://www.internaldisplacement.org/countries/iran - No official UNHCR statistics on IDP’s in Iran. 74,000 new displacements in Iran due to disasters. 4 UNHCR. (2019) Islamic Republic of Iran, Global Focus. Retrieved from http://reporting.unhcr.org/node/2527?y=2019#year. Many refugees however are expected to be unregistered. (In a context of mixed migration, the lines between refugees and migrants are blurry, particularly when there is no clear functional Refugee Status Determination procedure in place). 5 UNHCR. (2017). Refugee population by country or territory of origin. Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.REFG.OR?end=2018&locations=IR&start=1990 4