Desperate Iranians are selling ORGANS for up to £12,000 due to country’s economic crisis

Amid a deepening economic crisis, poverty has driven many Iranians to sell bodily organs to foreign buyers, Iranian news warns.

Reports claim that people are selling kidneys, liver, cornea, bone marrow, sperm and egg to support their families or pay medical bills, bringing them in from £5,500 ($7,000) to £12,000 ($15,000) per organ.

Iran International quoted local news as saying that middlemen within the multimillion-dollar industry would buy the organs to ship to countries like the UAE, Turkey and Iraq.

There is no evidence of any action being taken to stop the online black market, usually with buyers obtaining organs through coercion or deception.

In 2019, Iran’s opposition party further alleged that the government had endorsed the practice of people living in poverty to sell their organs.

A victim told local news outlet Jahan-e-Sanat: ‘My blood type is O negative and I am 22 years old. I will sell my kidney for 5 billion rials ($10,000).

“Because of my financial problems, I have no choice but to sell my kidney. If you want my liver, I’ll sell part of it for 2 billion rials ($4,000).’

Reports of organ trafficking in Iran have increased in recent years as Iran weathers the effects of harsh sanctions, a contraction in oil exports and high inflation.

2018, reports emergence of people waiting for buyers in public on the streets of Karaj, northern Iran.

“I’m waiting for a customer,” a woman reportedly wrote on a cardboard sign as she waited with a pale, sickly teenager of about fifteen. “I will sell my kidney to save my son’s life.”

The report alleged that the middlemen often use social media as a marketing tool, targeting people with organs to sell who may be in dire need of money.

It also claimed that people would be able to buy newborn babies on the sites.

Iran Human Rights Monitor — an activist group working with the opposition group, the National Council of Resistance (NCRI) — reported before the pandemic that workers at Karaj’s Khomeini Hospital sold their kidneys to survive.

A member of the city council, Ghadir Mahdavi, said at the time that upon his arrival at the health center he was “unable to pay their children’s house rent or tuition fees for months, and due to economic pressures caused by months of not pay. the staff sell their kidneys’.

It is not strictly illegal in Iran to trade an organ, such as a kidney, for money. a Report 2022 noted that the only government intervention so far in Iran’s kidney market has been to set a country-wide minimum price.

The report notes that men in Iran are more likely to donate their kidneys because of traditional “breadwinner” expectations.

Karaj, where people have been reportedly forced to sell their organs to escape poverty

Still reeling from Covid-19 and the impact of the war in Ukraine, Iran’s economic situation has worsened amid massive inflationary pressures.

The closure of companies in early 2020 tightened sanctions that had been in place since early 2010 over a dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran briefly benefited from an agreement with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, implemented in 2016 to limit nuclear activity in exchange for access to more than $100 billion in frozen assets abroad, allowing oil exports increased.

But with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the US quickly pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – also known as the Nuclear Deal – in May 2018.

The reintroduction of sanctions resulted in a sharp drop in Iran’s GDP as experts warned that Iran was earning progress about its nuclear program.

Only in the last two years has Iran’s economy picked up again thanks to a post-pandemic recovery in services and wider oil exports – mainly to China.

Pre-pandemic, poverty in Iran amounted to 27%with an increase of five percentage points between 2018 and 2019 due to sanctions.

Poverty in Iran is highlighted by deep inequality, with the poorest 40% experiencing a stronger than average contraction in spending.

Inflation has eroded the real value of remittances, hitting the poorest hardest.

a report published in Iran this year showed that a third of the country’s population now lives in abject poverty, via Iran International.