Iranians among top asylum seekers in UK in 2024

Iranian nationals were among the leading groups seeking asylum in the UK in 2024 and their number hit a new record, according to Home Office immigration data.

A total of 108,138 people claimed asylum, marking an 18% increase from the previous year and surpassing a record set in 2002.

Iranian nationals ranked third in asylum claims in the UK in 2024 with 8,099 claims. Pakistan had the highest number of claims with 10,542, followed by Afghanistan with 8,508.

A further analysis of the data suggests a notable increase in asylum applications from Iranians, particularly in 2022, with the highest surge occurring in Q4 of that year, with 3,686 applications.

The spike likely may reflect growing migration pressures driven by the nationwide protests and state repression on demonstrations following the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022.

The nationwide protest movement dubbed the Woman Life Freedom movement was met with increasingly violent government crackdowns, prompting many Iranians to seek asylum abroad.

During the protests, security forces killed at least 550 protesters, including children, and imprisoned over 20,000 people.

From Q1 2023 onwards, while there was some fluctuation but asylum applications remained relatively high at consistently above 1,500 per quarter for non-unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) and over 100 for UASC.

The continued upward trend through Q3 and Q4 of 2024 shows sustained asylum-seeking activity, though the surge in Q4 2022 remains the most significant increase in recent years.

However, despite the rise in applications, the number of decisions granting protection has not kept pace. Of 3,686 applications made by Iranians in Q2 2024, only 1,324 were granted protection.

The highest number of grants occurred in Q3 of 2023, when 4,647 Iranians were granted protection.

This disparity between grants of protection compared to applications suggests the lengthy immigration processing times are contributing to a backlog.

Pezeshkian’s government under fire for not supporting ethnic languages cause

Feb 26, 2025, 16:18 GMT

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Maryam Sinaiee

Masoud Pezeshkian's government is facing criticism for failing to support a motion that would have allowed limited ethnic literature courses in secondary schools. The Parliament rejected the motion on Wednesday.

President Pezeshkian speaks both Torki (a Turkic language spoken in northwestern Iran and several other provinces) and Kurdish, his parents' native languages. He has been one of the few officials to advocate for granting official status to ethnic languages under Article 15 of the Constitution. In 2016, he was elected chairman of a parliamentary faction consisting of Torki-speaking lawmakers, with approximately 100 of the 290 members of Parliament joining the group at the time.

However, during Wednesday's debate, Pezeshkian's government representative, Kazem Delkhosh, sided with lawmakers opposing the motion. Delkhosh argued that the proposed plan would create challenges for the educational system, including hiring specialized teachers, and could spark disputes in ethnically diverse regions.

The motion, put forward by the Parliament’s Education Committee, sought to introduce two hours of ethnic literature studies in secondary schools on an optional basis. The proposal was rejected by 130 lawmakers, with 104 voting in favor and five abstaining.

Supporters of the motion cited the Iranian Constitution, which designates Persian as the official language but also guarantees the right to use regional and tribal languages in the media and to teach literature in schools. However, opponents expressed concerns about national unity. Mohammad-Mehdi Shahriari, one of the lawmakers who spoke against the motion, warned that it could "threaten the country’s territorial integrity and national unity.”

Conversely, Alireza Novin, a lawmaker from Tabriz—the capital of East Azerbaijan Province and a majority-Torki-speaking city—strongly criticized the notion that promoting ethnic languages could deepen divisions or endanger national security. During a fiery speech in Parliament, he denounced the argument as baseless.

In an interview with the local news outlet Asr-e Tabriz, Novin further accused presidential candidates of making empty promises regarding the constitutional recognition of ethnic languages. He argued that Pezeshkian's administration, at the very least, should have refrained from opposing the motion.

Amir Karimzad, the managing director of another local media outlet, also took to X (formerly Twitter) to criticize the stance expressed by the government's representative in the Parliament. He claimed that Parliament's rejection of the plan reflected "extremists' fear of the power of ethnic groups."

The decision sparked widespread outrage on social media, with many non-Persian speakers and advocates for mother-tongue education expressing frustration over Parliament's refusal to allow even a limited form of ethnic literature instruction in schools.

The debate over the motion took place just days after the UN-designated International Mother Language Day. On February 21, activists in several Torki- and Kurdish-speaking cities marked the occasion by distributing children’s books and leaflets to raise awareness of the importance of native-language education.

Meanwhile, some others have reported the arrest of Mohammad Asadi in Maragheh for handing out books written in Torki to children. Reports also surfaced that security forces summoned the administrators of a private school in Tabriz after they organized a children’s musical performance featuring songs in Torki at a shopping mall on February 21. Social media users reported that authorities had warned the school against such activities.

Ethnic language activists in Iran are frequently accused of promoting separatism and often face prosecution or imprisonment. Advocates argue that the exclusive use of Persian in education erodes cultural heritage and disadvantages children who do not speak Persian fluently or at all when they begin school.

There are no official statistics on the number of speakers of ethnic languages in Iran. However, languages such as Torki, Kurdish, and Balochi are spoken by millions across the country.