UNHCR renews calls for greater assistance on World Refugee Day

As the United Nations marks World Refugee Day on Thursday, the flood of Afghans coming home continues to astound aid workers. Renewing his call for greater donor assistance, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in less than four months, the world's largest repatriation and rehabilitation effort had assisted the voluntary return of over one million Afghans. "Fresh contributions of funds and food aid are urgently needed," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers told reporters in the Swiss city of Geneva earlier this week. "The new government of President Karzai urgently needs international support." Echoing this call, Peter Kessler, the UNHCR spokesman in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, told IRIN that as the world marked Refugee Day, countries had to ensure that the needs of refugees were met and that the returnees had all the help they needed to rebuild their homeland. "Despite a precarious situation in their homeland, more than a million Afghans have decided to return to their homeland. This is very positive, but the situation inside the country remains fragile. The vast majority of people inside the country live in extreme poverty. Health services, food assistance and education are all in short supply," Kessler explained. When the Afghan authorities and UNHCR began the assisted return effort on 1 March, initial planning figures indicated that about 800,000 refugees would go home - mainly from Pakistan and Iran, the two countries hosting the largest number of Afghans. Additionally some 400,000 internally displaced persons were to be transported back to their home villages. However, these numbers have since vastly exceeded expectations. As of Wednesday, 949,399 individuals had returned from Pakistan alone. Meanwhile, under a parallel programme initiated in Iran on 9 April, nearly 78,000 Afghans have gone home, mostly from the larger urban areas of the country to the western Afghan province of Herat and the central provinces of Kabul and Parvan. The UNHCR spokesman in the Iranian capital, Tehran, Mohammad Nouri, told IRIN that about 1,500 people a day were returning, but predicted that numbers might increase in early July when schools close. "Many Afghans now are returning with their families [and] giving us an indication of their intention to stay [in Afghanistan]," Nouri said. "While we don't promote repatriation, we are doing our best to facilitate the voluntary return of those Afghans who have made the decision to go back," he added. Of the those returning from Iran, the vast majority - 58 percent - were ethnic Tajiks, followed by Uzbeks, Pashtuns and Hazaras, Nouri said. Commenting on the current situation, he noted that whereas UNHCR had planned on the basis of assisting up to 400,000 Afghans, 18 percent of that number had already been met. "I'm quite optimistic that we will fulfil our planning figures, and possibly beyond. If it goes beyond that, we will need additional assistance from the international community," he said. Indeed, given the refugees' enthusiasm to return, UNHCR now maintains there is a real danger that Afghanistan could slip backwards unless relief agencies on the ground immediately receive the funds needed to help Afghans rebuild their homeland, devastated by decades of drought, poverty and conflict. "The development actors need to step in as soon as possible to meet the needs of not just the one million who have returned, but the more than 20 million inside the country already," Kessler said. UNHCR still requires more than US $86 million dollars to cover its $271 million aid operation in Afghanistan and in the neighbouring states. Earlier this week, Filippo Grandi, the head of UNHCR's operations in Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pol-e Charkhi returnee centre in the Afghan capital, Kabul, that if larger reconstruction programmes did not begin quickly in Afghanistan, the returns could be jeopardised. "The UNHCR operation, which is a very large operation, is only funded to the tune of 60 to 65 percent," Grandi said. "We are already almost at mid-year. This is the season where we spend most of the money to buy building materials and to pay the travel costs of the returnees. If we don't receive fresh contributions, we are running out of money in a few weeks and we will have to stop this operation," he warned. The lack of funds in some areas could already be having an effect. According to Kessler, in the past three weeks the number of returnees from Pakistan had dropped from a high of almost 100,000 per week to some 50,000. This could be due to the ongoing heat wave, the unfolding Loya Jirga process going on inside the country, or the fact that the agency two weeks ago announced that it would be reducing travel assistance to returnees, he explained. As part of the UNHCR repatriation package, returnees receive food and non-food assistance, as well as a small cash grant to offset travel costs.