2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(1) Iranian mothers and non-Iranian fathers can apply for Iranian nationality before reaching 18 years of age through their mothers. 10 Persons 18 years of age and above can apply independently.11 The revised legislation was approved by the Guardian Council in October 2019 and submitted to the Government for implementation.12 The most recent data, published in July 2021, reports that, since the beginning of the implementation of the new law in July 2020, more than 90,654 cases have applied for Iranian citizenship, around 62% of them under 18 years old, while 1,808 cases have received their ID cards.13 HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM IN IRAN In general, there are three populations of concern in Iran who have been affected by the nationality laws and are undocumented: (1) people of Iranian origin with no access to Iranian citizenship; (2) Afghans without documentation; and (3) children of Iranian mothers and non-Iranian fathers without documentation. PEOPLE OF IRANIAN ORIGIN WITH NO ACCESS TO IRANIAN CITIZENSHIP The first group consists of persons of Iranian origin who have lived in Iran for a long time but have no identification documentation due to poverty or cultural barriers, such as lack of knowledge about the importance of documentation. This population is estimated to number up to 1 million.14 The majority live in the provinces of Sistan-o-Baluchestan, Kordestan, Khuzestan and Lorestan. Due to the lack of understanding about the benefits of birth registration, the desire to avoid conscription, the high incidence of home births and the population’s remoteness from large cities and civil registry offices, people in this community have not registered their births and, consequently, have not received any identity documentation. This problem has passed from generation to generation, with the most recent generation unable to obtain identity documents; often, children do not have a parent who is a documented citizen or proof that both they and their parent(s) were born in Iran.15 Another group within this category are those children who are born out of wedlock, whose father is unknown and whose mother does not have identification documents, especially in cases where the mother has a 10 11 12 13 14 15 Amendment to the Law on Determining the Nationality of Children Born from a Marriage of Iranian Women and Foreign Men 2006 (Islamic Republic of Iran) (‘Amending Law 2006’). ‘Iranian Women Marry Foreign Men; Citizenship was Granted to Children’, Euronews (online, 3 June 2020) <https://fa.euronews.com/2020/06/03/granting-iranian-citizenshipfrom-mother-to-child-under-18-years-of-age-were-implemented>. ibid; Hajikhani (n 9). ‘Factsheet of Ministry of Interior: Review of the Main Activities of the Security and Disciplinary Affairs Department in the 11th and 12th Administration’, Iranian Ministry of Interior (26 July 2021) <https://moi.ir/fa/155136>. This link is only available through an Iranian IP address. Masoud Rezaei, ‘There Are One Million Unidentified Persons in the Country/Unidentified Persons Are Deprived of All Government Facilities’, Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency (online, 5 May 2017) <https://www.icana.ir/Fa/News/332614>; Fatemeh Shiri, ‘Unidentified Families After Four Generations’, Islamic Republic News Agency (online, 16 July 2020) <www.irna.ir/news/83846128/>. Nasrin Hazareh-Moghaddam, ‘The Challenge for Iranians without Identity Cards Remains’, Iran Labor News Agency (online, 16 May 2019) <https://www.ilna.news/fa/tiny/news-763514>. 142