Tehran, Iran, June 19
By Mehdi Sepahvand – Trend:
Iran is spending an annual amount of $200 billion to educate international students, including for the most part the refugees, Iran’s Education Minister Ali Asqar Fani said.
Speaking in a meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, Fani said the UN provides Iran with only $20 million for giving services to foreign refugees, Fars news agency reported June 19.
In the last educational year, 386,000 Afghan nationals were given educational services at 25,000 schools across Iran, he said, noting that following a decree by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian schools register Afghans even without ID cards.
“Despite all the domestic problems related to the economy and political sanctions, we even provide the foreign students with things such as uniforms, stationary items, and other educational equipment.”
During the same year, he said, Iran accepted 36,000 new Afghan students, who also received medical checkups, vaccination, etc.
In the early days of the Islamic Republic, only 6 percent of Afghan refugees were literate, but now the number stands at 70 percent, Fani said.