What are Private or Community Sponsorship Pathways?
Sponsorship programs provide individuals, groups of individuals, or organizations with an opportunity to sponsor refugees and forcibly displaced people to come to their country, thus offering them protection and a new home.
In private sponsorship, the sponsors directly engage in the efforts to admit displaced persons in their country. They are the ones identifying, selecting, and supporting the entry and stay of people in need of international protection, who are not referred by UNHCR.
While sponsors can freely choose whom to support, the individuals sponsored most often include nuclear and/or extended family members of the sponsors or people known to the community.
Please note that UNHCR Iran cannot nominate you to be sponsored and cannot influence or interfere with the sponsorship process in any way. The links below are for your information only.
Some available sponsorship pathways that refugees in Iran might access include the Canadian Sponsorship Programme, and the Australian Special Humanitarian Sponsorship Programme.
For more information on each sponsorship program and its requirements, please follow the links below:
Australia: Special Humanitarian Program (SHP)
Canada: Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR) program
The following sponsorship programmes dedicated to Human Rights Defenders are also available:
Europe: https://protectdefenders.eu/protecting-defenders/#programme
If you have further questions, please contact the country directly through their dedicated webpages. UNHCR will not be able to follow-up on, respond or support Private or Community Sponsorship requests.