UNHCR returnee iris testing tops 200,000

The number of Afghan refugees checked through a unique iris-recognition system before they are repatriated to Afghanistan under an assistance programme run by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) passed the 200,000 mark last week, according to a UNHCR official. "Iris testing has been considered a great success because it allows us to maintain a check on legitimate returnees and discourages any cheating," Jack Redden, a UNHCR spokesman, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Monday, adding that his agency was very pleased with the performance of the state-of-the-art technology, often under adverse conditions. The use of the biometric data enabled UNHCR to detect anyone who had previously been through the test and was seeking assistance for a second time, an agency press statement said. Returnees are entitled to a travel grant that varies with the distance to be travelled, as well as food and some non-food items like shelter material. If the test reveals that the refugee has been enrolled before, the individual is refused assistance. The actual enrolment process takes only a few seconds, with images of the iris being transmitted to a computer server before the system converts it into a digital code and checks it against the entire database from all iris centres to see if there is a duplicate, according to the statement. Two iris verification centres currently run through the work-week, one in Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and other in Quetta, the capital of the southwestern province of Balochistan, both of which border Afghanistan. A third camp, at Ali Zai in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a semi-autonomous tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan, operates only on the first day of the week, according to the press release. Mobile teams could test groups at refugee camps to speed their departures, it added. UNHCR's voluntary repatriation programme was scheduled to run until 2005, Redden said. "Repatriations will continue next year. In addition, we will be consolidating refugee camps, with some of the new ones - in terms of the ones set up after 9/11 - being closed, and inmates will be given a choice to either repatriate or move to other camps," he stated. Refugees returning to Afghanistan with UN assistance this year numbered more than 320,000, as compared to the 1.5 million who went home last year - almost all before the introduction of the iris-test programme, which began with a test project in Peshawar in October 2002, the press statement said. Meanwhile, a delegation from nine donors providing the main financial support for UNHCR's worldwide humanitarian operations passed through Pakistan on its way to Afghanistan as part of a 13-day tour that also included Iran, another UNHCR statement said. A hectic three-day stopover saw the delegation, with members from Canada, Denmark, the EC, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Britain and the United States, visiting refugee camps in the NWFP, which hosts the largest Afghan refugee population in Pakistan. Help for Afghan refugees, both for their care in host countries and for repatriation, remained one of UNHCR's largest programmes, the statement said. After touring UNHCR facilities for returning refugees in Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, the donor mission was scheduled to fly to Iran to assess UNHCR operations there, it added.