As of 2026-06. UNHCR counted 5.4 million returns from Iran and Pakistan between October 2023 and February 2026, 2.9 million of them during 2025, with returns continuing through 2026; the total is still rising.
Pakistan announced its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan in October 2023, requiring undocumented foreigners - overwhelmingly Afghans, many born in Pakistan - to leave by 1 November or face deportation, and subsequently extended the policy in phases to holders of Afghan Citizen Cards and then to Proof of Registration cardholders. Iran, which hosted a larger Afghan population, ran parallel deportations that increased sharply in 2025. UNHCR reported more than six million returns and deportations from the two countries between late 2023 and mid-2026, the largest movement of Afghans since the 1980s, into a country under Taliban rule with a collapsed economy, restricted aid and severe restrictions on women and girls. UNHCR, IOM and human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have described elements of the campaigns as refoulement and documented arbitrary detention, property loss, extortion at checkpoints and family separation; Pakistan and Iran maintain that they are enforcing immigration law after decades of hosting refugees with limited international support. Returnees have concentrated in Kabul, Nangarhar, Kandahar and Herat, where humanitarian agencies report severe shortages of shelter, water and work.
Pakistan and Iran deported or pressured out millions of Afghan refugees and migrants after 2023
The House of Commons Library, drawing on UNHCR and host-government figures, put roughly 3 million Afghans in Pakistan and over 4.5 million in Iran before the expulsions - a population accumulated across four decades of war and including registered refugees, holders of Afghan Citizen Cards and undocumented migrants. Both governments' own estimates differ from UNHCR's, and the undocumented share is inherently uncertain.
No mass death toll attaches to the expulsions. Deaths have been reported among returnees from exposure, road accidents and lack of medical care at border crossings and in transit sites, and humanitarian agencies warn of excess mortality among returnees inside Afghanistan, but no figures have been compiled.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UNHCR documented arbitrary detention of Afghans ahead of deportation, seizure or forced sale of property, and the cancellation of documented refugee status.
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran