Refugees are actively contributing to the COVID-19 response by sewing masks and gowns for health workers and helping to distribute aid to the poorest members of their communities. Dr. Fezzeh Hosseini, a 38-year-old Afghan refugee, was recently appointed to head up the coronavirus public outreach programme in Iran’s central Esfahan province. She is the only refugee doctor in Esfahan and provides phone consultations to Iranian and Afghan patients suffering from or at risk of contracting the coronavirus. She is also the head physician of the Razi health centre in Khomeini-Shahr, an area of Esfahan.

Roya, 20, an Afghan refugee, works in a tailoring workshop in Sarvestan refugee settlement, in Iran’s southern Fars province, along with around 50 other refugee women. The workshop was established by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and later expanded by the World Food Programme (WFP). It switched its production line at the start of the pandemic to make hygiene masks, in an example of refugees’ direct involvement in the fight against COVID-19, but also of their effort to safeguard their monthly income. Since February 2020, when the first COVID-19 cases were officially recorded in Iran, Roya and her fellow refugee tailors have produced more than 10,000 masks per day, which are delivered to health and humanitarian service providers across the country.

Rozma Ghafouri, 29, an Afghan refugee living in Iran, won the 2020 Nansen Refugee Award for the Asia region, for her commendable work helping children at risk in Shiraz, Iran. As a football coach and a youth counsellor, she draws on her own at-times harsh childhood to get young refugees and undocumented Afghans aged between 11 and 15 – out of work and back into school.