(Beirut) – The Qatari authorities since March 2026 have ordered at least four people with roles in key institutions of the minority Baha’i religion to leave the country, Human Rights Watch said today, based on information from informed sources. The four were ordered to leave without due process and with no legal pathway to challenge the orders.
The people ordered to leave, who have lived in Qatar for decades and have families there, risk deportation in violation of their right to family life. Qatari authorities’ longstandingdiscrimination against Baha’is separates families and results in the loss of employment and income. Human Rights Watch has documented asignificant rise in persecution of Baha’is since the beginning of the armed conflict between Israel, the United States, and Iran.
“Qatari authorities have sought external support and sympathy as the target of Iranian attacks while continuing their repression in Qatar,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Qatar’s deportations of Baha’is will uproot families and tear them apart.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed three people between April and June with knowledge of the cases.
The Baha’i faith is centered around the unity of all faiths and people. Baha’i followers are frequently discriminated against in Qatar, Egypt, and Yemen, and subjected to the crime against humanity of persecution in Iran.
On March 3, a Baha’i married couple was told to appear at the Qatar Ministry of Interior’s Search and Follow-Up department the following day, the source said. At the ministry on March 4, Qatari authorities informed them that they must leave Qatar and will be banned from returning without providing a reason or a way to challenge the decision.
The wife, born and raised in Qatar to Iranian parents and who has lived her entire life in Qatar, serves as an auxiliary board member, a voluntary pastoral role within the Baha’i community’s institutions. Her husband, who has lived in Qatar for 15 years, is a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is in Qatar, an elected body that tends to the affairs of Baha’is in the country.
The couple requested permission to remain in Qatar until the end of the school year as they have two children enrolled in schools in the country, the source said. They were told to submit an appeal along with a letter from the Ministry of Education that certified that their children are enrolled in school, and the authorities extended the deadline to leave Qatar until the end of the school year, at the end of June. Qatari authorities confiscated the family’s passports until they present confirmed flight reservations, the source said.
On April 7, another auxiliary board member, a 43-year-old man who has lived in Qatar all his life, was summoned and verbally informed of a deportation order. He was told that he had to leave Qatar by April 21, even though he had valid residency until August 2028, an informed source said. No legal grounds or pathway for appeal were provided, the source said, though the date by which he must leave was extended to June 17.
He is the primary caretaker of his 80-year-old mother, who moved to Qatar from Iran when she was 21, and the sponsor for her residency in the country, the source said. “She came to Qatar before Qatar became a country and now has to pack 60 years of her life and leave,” the source said.
On April 22, Moin Yeganeh, 55, a former member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is in Qatar, who is also a lifelong resident of Qatar, was told to report to the same office and was detained for a week, a source said. Yeganeh was held with other migrants awaiting deportation and frequently interrogated without a lawyer, the source said. He was released on April 30 on the condition that he would leave Qatar by end of May, though the deadline was extended to June 16.
Yeganeh’s parents, 89 and 81, who have lived in Qatar for more than 60 years, rely on him for care and are under his sponsorship for their legal residency in Qatar. If he is deported, his parents will lose their residencies and either have to leave Qatar with him or find a new sponsor.
Qatar should cancel the orders to all four Baha’i members to leave the country, Human Rights Watch said.
Any members of the Baha’i community who hold Iranian nationality would be at serious risk of persecution if Qatari authorities returned them to Iran, in potential violation of the international legal principle of nonrefoulement. The principle requires governments to refrain from returning or transferring people to places where they would face serious harm.
United Nations experts have repeatedly expressed their concern regarding Qatar’s discriminatory treatment of Bahai’s. In May, UN experts called on Qatar to reverse the deportations, expressing concerns about “the potential erasure of the Baha’i religious community from Qatar.”
This is not the first time Qatar has cracked down on members of Qatar’s Baha’i institutions. In January 2025, Qatari authorities issued a deportation order for a member of the National Spiritual Assembly for the Baha’is in Qatar. A high-ranking Qatari religious figure told him that if he announced his conversion to Sunni Islam, he could “make the deportation go away,” he told Human Rights Watch.
In April 2025, authorities arrested and detained Remy Rowhani, chair of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is in Qatar, and sentenced him to five years in prison on abusive charges that violated his rights to freedom of speech and religion. In September, Qatar’s Court of Appeal reversed Rowhani’s conviction and acquitted him after pressure from the UN, rightsorganizations, media, and the US Commission on International Religious Freedoms.
Under international human rights law, including article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, states are obligated to protect every individual’s right to hold, practice, and change their religion free from coercion, discrimination, or interference. Qatar’s Constitution also provides a guarantee of freedom of worship in article 50.
“Qatar should halt the plan to deport these individuals,” Page said. “The continuing repression of members of the Baha’i community violates both Qatar’s own laws and international law.”
