Javad is a 30-year-old architect and photographer in Iran. Born to an Iranian mother and an Afghan father in Iran, he has not yet been granted Iranian citizenship due to the country’s nationality law, which only gives children of Iranian fathers automatic citizenship.

As a result, Javad has faced plenty of hurdles and has been deprived of many services, including four years of primary school, insurance and a driver's license. He also faces the annual extension of his father’s legal residence in Iran. Hundreds of thousands of children in Iran find themselves in a similar situation. It's mainly seen in the eastern regions of the country, where the population of Afghan refugees is the greatest.

According to a 2019 report by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Iran is among the seven countries in the world, including Lebanon, Kuwait and Qatar, that “do not allow mothers to confer their citizenship on their children with no or very limited exceptions.” 

Lawyer Shahnaz Sajadi, an assistant to Iran’s vice president for women and family affairs, told Al-Monitor, “Our current legislation dates back to 1934, when Iran was not faced with refugees. But the situation has changed over the past three to four decades, and Iran has been home to millions of refugees, mainly from Afghanistan and Iraq.”