Risk and Resilience: Drug Use Among Refugee Households; Case of Afghan Refugees in Iran

Background and Purpose: The population of Afghan refugees is the second largest refugee population worldwide. Afghan refugees, who have been facing decades of displacement, are mainly living in two immediate neighboring countries to their country of origin: Iran and Pakistan. There are reasons to believe that Afghan refugees are prone to face the problem of illicit drug use, as this group is fleeing the country known as the biggest producer narcotics to the countries that are the biggest consumers. This poster relies on original data collected among more than 2,000 Afghan refugees households residing in Iran in 2010. This dataset that was collected for the authors’ Masters degree thesis is the most current and largest available dataset on Afghan refugees in Iran that has been used as a baseline data by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), World Food Program (WFP) and the World Bank. The purpose of this poster is to review risk and resilience factors in illicit drug use among Afghan refugee households. According to the UNHCR, worldwide displacement is at its highest rate in history and the situation is likely to worsen. Over 19 million individuals were officially recognized as refugees, while millions more were waiting to receive refugee status by the end of 2014. Studies on Afghan refugees as the world most longstanding refugee population can be used as a lesson learn for new waves of refugee populations. Methods: Dataset of this study was collected through deep interview with 2,035 randomly selected heads of Afghan household in Iran. Illicit drug use in the household was selected as a dependent variable affected by the dependent variables of education, poverty, neighborhood, gender and refugee status. Results: Analysis with the Logit model showed that education, gender and neighborhood are significant indicators (p<0.01) with large effect sizes in defining illicit drug use in the household while poverty and refugee status showed very small effect sizes. Education defines 3%, neighborhood 5.5% and gender explains 6% of the variance change in the illicit drug use. Conclusions and Implications: Findings of this study shows specific attention should be given to education and prevention programs in high-risk neighborhoods. More than half of the refugee populations worldwide are children under 18 years old; yet, only half of them are enrolled in primary schools. Moreover, worldwide refugees who are living in urban areas are concentrated in low-income and high-risk neighborhoods. In planning for prevention program more attention should be given to education and community-based prevention.