UNHCR is extremely concerned by the rapid escalation of conflict in Afghanistan. Amid intensified clashes in Nimruz province in the country’s south-west, nearly two hundred Afghan refugees have been forced to flee to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is estimated that since the beginning of the year nearly 400,000 Afghans have been internally displaced within the country – some 244,000 since May alone. UNHCR urges the Iranian authorities to keep the Milak border crossing open in light of the intensifying humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Not doing so may put thousands of lives at risk. In cooperation with the Iran’s Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants’ Affairs (BAFIA), UNHCR has already provided immediate assistance to new arrivals, including food and water. Together with other humanitarian actors, UNHCR is prepared to provide urgent assistance and support reception arrangements – including emergency shelter, latrines and other core relief items.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has released yesterday a non-return advisory for Afghanistan, calling for a bar on forced returns of Afghan nationals, including asylum seekers who have had their claims rejected. UNHCR calls on States to halt forcible returns of Afghan nationals who have previously been determined not to be in need of international protection. States have a legal and moral responsibility to allow those fleeing Afghanistan to seek safety, and to not forcibly return refugees. UNHCR’s advisory against forced returns to Afghanistan remains in effect until security, rule of law and the human rights conditions improve enough in the country to allow for safe and dignified returns.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, UNHCR's reception centers in Iran continue to be physically closed for in-person appointments for the time being. A page was created to provide useful and reliable information to individuals seeking support in Iran, including new arrivals.Please refer to UNHCR's help page for official information, including hotline numbers across the country. https://help.unhcr.org/iran/en/

Myanmar plans to give the green light to three of six hydroelectric projects to begin construction on the Thanlwin River within three months

ကီၢ်ပယီၤတိာ်ပာ်ဝဲလၢကဟ့ၣ်လီၤတၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်လၢတၢ်ကစးထီၣ်မၤထံဂံၢ်လီမ့ၣ်အူအတၢ်သူၣ်ထီၣ်ဘှီထီၣ်အတၢ်တိာ်ကျဲၤ၆ခါအကျါ၃ခါဖဲဃိၣ်လိာ်ကျိ အဖီခိၣ်လၢ၃လါအတီၢ်ပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.

သံလွင်မြစ်အပေါ်စတင်တည်ဆောက်မည့်ရေအားလျှပ်စစ်မီးစီမံကိန်း ၆ ခုထဲက ၃ ခုကို ၃ လအတွင်းတွင်​ခွင့်​ပြု​ မည်ဟုမြန်မာကရည်ရွယ် ထားသည်။​

SE Consultation Meeting will be held on 17th January 2014. (Time and Venue TBC)

မုၢ်ထီၣ်ကလံၤထံးတၢ်တၢၣ်ပီၣ်ဟ့ၣ်ကူၣ်သကိးတၢ်အတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ကဘၣ်တၢ်မၤအီၤလၢဝ့ၢ်တကူၣ်ဖဲလါစဲးပထ့ဘၢၣ် (၁၈)သီအနံၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.

၂၀၁၃ခု​နှစ်​စက်​တင်​ဘာ​လ​(၁၈)ရက်​နေ့​တွင်​အ​ရှေ့​တောင်​ပိုင်း​ဒေ​သ​ဆွေး​နွေး​ညှိ​နှိုင်း​ပွဲ​အ​စည်း​အ​ဝေး​ကို​ရန်​ကုန်​မြို့​ ၌​​ပြု​လုပ်​မည်​ဖြစ်​သည်။​

Results from the pilot survey by the Mae Fah Luang Foundation (MFLF) in Mae La camp have now been released through the media