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Repatriation through Milak resumes

The repatriation of Afghan refugees through Iran's southeastern border crossing of Milak has resumed following a two-week. The exit station was forced shut on 30 May due to insecurity in the Zaranj area of Afghanistan's southwestern Nimruz province. "The border crossing at Milak has reopened," Laura O'Mahony, a spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told IRIN from the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Friday. "The vast majority of people going through are registering in the southern Iranian cities of Zahedan, Kerman and Zabol," she said. "The security of the returnees remains one of paramount concern, but the demand for the refugees to travel through Milak remains significantly lower than Dogharun - the main border crossing point," O'Mahony explained. She noted that UNHCR would be keeping a careful eye on the situation, monitoring security in coordination with agency colleagues in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. But access through Dogharun - on the northern stretch of Iran's 936 km frontier with Afghanistan - remains easier, and is the preferred option, given road conditions, particularly if the returnees are bound for northern areas of their homeland. However, those whose final destination is closer to Milak - for example the western provinces of Farah and the southern provinces of Helmand and Nimruz, may choose Milak. Since repatriation through Milak resumed in mid-June, some 169 people, travelling in three separate convoys, have passed through the exit point, located in Iran's southwestern Sistan-Baluchestan Province. UNHCR hopes the numbers passing through Milak will pick up again following the decision to maintain the travel allowance for Nimruz Province at US $10 rather than reducing it to $5. Effective this Saturday, all refugees returning via Milak to final destinations in Nimruz would receive US $10 on arrival in Zaranj, O'Mahony confirmed. Meanwhile, work aimed at upgrading services at Milak is making tangible progress. The medical NGO, Iraqi Refugees Aid Council, has now begun providing health care at the border exit station. The Iranian government body dealing with refugee issues, the Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs Office, has constructed new facilities and the provision of bread, baked with flour provided by the UN's World Food Programme, to returnees is also under way. More than 83,000 Afghan refugees have returned home from Iran through the UNHCR-assisted voluntary repatriation programme. According to the latest figures on Tuesday, since the programme began on 9 April, 83,578 people have returned under its auspices, including 11,593 families. The vast majority - 80,496 people - reached Afghanistan through Dogharun, located in Iran's eastern Khorasan Province. The remaining 3,082 passed through Milak. Meanwhile, in a parallel move, 20,721 Afghan refugees have spontaneously returned to their homeland from Iran. These people went of their own free will, unassisted by either UNHCR or the Iranian government. However, the UNHCR Chief of Mission in Iran, Philippe Lavanchy, recently told donors that more money was urgently needed if the organisation's regional Afghanistan operation was to be sustained. The agency hopes to facilitate the voluntary return of up to 400,000 Afghans living in Iran this year alone. Referring to the joint tripartite agreement signed in April between UNHCR, Tehran and Kabul, Lavanchy told representatives from 11 different Tehran-based embassies, including three ambassadors, as they visited the Dogharun border crossing operation: "We have to be sure that we [UNHCR] can fulfil our part of the bargain." Like neighbouring Pakistan, Iran hosted more than two million Afghan refugees. In the course of four months, UNHCR, in a similar repatriation effort in Pakistan, has already assisted more than one million Afghans to go home.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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