Enhanced assistance programme for Afghan refugees

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is offering an enhanced assistance package to refugees choosing to return to Afghanistan from the 'new' camps of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan, set to be closed by the end of August. "The new special package, introduced in June this year, is in addition to the standard UNHCR repatriation package received by more than 200,000 returning Afghans earlier this year," Asif Shahzad, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency's mission, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday. Initially established near the border areas of NWFP and Balochistan, the 12 'new' camps were to temporarily house refugees fleeing the war that unseated the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan in late 2001. However, in addition to receiving another three months of wheat supplies on arrival in Afghanistan, families repatriating from these camps will receive non-food benefits as well, including a tent to provide shelter while they re-establish themselves inside their homeland. Under the normal repatriation package being provided to residents of the 'old' camps, returnees are provided a small monetary grant to return. In the new camps, there are 120,000 Afghan refugees in Balochistan province and another 65,000 refugees in NWFP. According to a recent survey, the majority of refugees in the 12 affected camps - six in each of the two provinces - expressed a desire to return. More than 239,000 refugees have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan since the voluntary repatriation programme resumed in March this year. Since it began in March 2002, UNHCR has assisted more than 2 million Afghans return home, in what is proving one of the agency's largest repatriation efforts to date. "Nearly 7,400 Afghan refugees out of a total of 190,000 have repatriated from the new camps so far," Shahzad explained, noting, UNHCR mobile teams were registering refugees in the 'new' camps in the NWFP in a further effort to facilitate a smoother departure. All refugees over the age of six years must go through a computerised iris recognition test in either the Pakistani cities of Quetta or Peshawar. "The technology can detect anyone who has previously been through the high-tech procedure. Anyone caught is refused the assistance package," the UNHCR official said. Islamabad and UNHCR had agreed earlier this year that all agency assistance to the 'new' camps would cease as of 1 September due to ongoing security concerns expressed by Pakistani officials regarding their location. Meanwhile, Pakistani officials have clarified that Afghan refugees have not been asked to vacate all the camps in the Waziristan district of NWFP as earlier reported by the media. Refugees from only a small area of South Waziristan where military operations were ongoing were asked to leave, Ghulam Dastageer, head of Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR), told IRIN in Islamabad. Meanwhile, CAR has dispatched two task forces to assess the repatriation effort in the 'new' camps of NWFP and Balochistan to be closed by the end of August. "We are closely monitoring the situation and in contact with UNHCR regarding the shifting of refugees from the 'new' camps, who do not wish to return to Afghanistan," Dastageer explained. And while Pakistan, which shares over 2,500 km of porous border with Afghanistan, lacks precise figures regarding the number of spontaneous returns of Afghans, hundreds of Afghan families cross over daily, in addition to daily wage workers who find more attractive wages in neighbouring Pakistan. The UNHCR voluntary repatriation programme from Pakistan operates under the Tripartite Agreement between UNHCR and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which remains in effect until March 2006. There are over a million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, which alongside Iran, is one the largest host countries to the Afghan diaspora.