A kolbar (Persian: کولبر) or kolber (Kurdish: کۆڵبەر) or cross-border labor[1] is a worker who is employed to carry goods on his/her back across the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey legally or illegally.
However, since this occupation has been declared illegal by the Iranian government, many people are killed each year by shots fired by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard border troops Often, however, many Kolbars freeze to death due to the cold or die from falling off mountains The proportion of women, children and people with an academic degree has increased in recent years as a result of the economic crisis in the region.
In recent years, the Iranian parliament has tried several times to recognize the profession of Kolbari as a legal activity and to push through a bill for this, but this has repeatedly failed.
The reason for this is that every year at this time, due to the high security measures on the occasion of the hostage-taking of Tehran (on 4 November 1979), a particularly large number of Kolbar die.
Thus, 3,000 projects are to be collected by kolbars, academic communities, and entrepreneurs with the participation of the Barakat Foundation in the three provinces of Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan, and nearly 10,000 direct and indirect job opportunities will be created.