“We must have the right to work!” a boy shouted when, at an introductory course on children’s rights, the teacher asked her students to think about the rights they need. This was several years ago, and the child who shouted was one of the many working migrant children learning to read and write at our centre near the Grand Bazaar in Tehran. At the time his remark came as a surprise to the teacher and to all of us at the Nasserkhosro Child House. We all imagined that the most important thing for these children is to quit working and start living like other kids do. Yet after interacting with them for several years, we now realise that there is more to their story than we believed.
Iran is a popular destination for immigration in the region, particularly from Afghanistan. There are no reliable official figures, but the 2017 census found upwards of 1.2 million Afghan migrants in the country and NGO data suggest the real figure is more than twice this. A great part of this population consists of boys under 18. They come to work, but also to learn to read and write. Afghan girls of the same age or even older are not allowed to travel on their own. That is why all the children at the Child House are boys.
They cross the border into Iran without their parents and with the help of smugglers. They can be as young as seven years old, and are usually accompanied by an adolescent relative or friend. This is a very dangerous trip that can easily get them killed. And, since they are undocumented on both sides, if they get shot at the border there will likely be no record of their deaths.
