Five-year-old Alireza Pourdad was scared, lying in a hospital bed in the burn ward between two adults who had been burned beyond recognition. Alireza had been injured in a blaze in his parents’ tent in a shantytown outside the Iranian capital in May 2012, and was in critical condition.
Alireza’s parents are ethnic Balochs from Iran's southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Like many others in Iran — most of them Balochs — who have no identity cards for legal and historical reasons, they had left their hometown 15 years earlier in search of work. As day laborers, the couple traveled between Tehran and Gorgan near the Caspian Sea throughout the year looking for seasonal work. Because they lacked the ID cards necessary to rent a home and access government services such as monthly cash subsidies and education, they were left living in deplorable conditions on Tehran's outskirts. To add to their misery, the police conducted raids there a few times a year in efforts to clear the area of stateless families, leaving tents burned and residents beaten.