UNHCR to resume Afghan repatriations from March

A voluntary repatriation programme for Afghan refugees, run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), that was suspended in November following the murder of a staff member in Afghanistan, will resume operations in March, according to an agency official. "We were aiming for 1 March. But that is actually [in the Muslim holy month of] Muharram. So we expect we'd do it right after that," Jack Redden, the UNHCR spokesman, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. The programme, which has assisted about 1.9 million Afghans to return home from Pakistan since early 2002, is expected to help about 400,000 more refugees to repatriate during 2004, a UNHCR press statement said. It was suspended following the murder of Bettina Goislard, a UNHCR staffer, in the southern Afghan city of Ghazni by gunmen, following months of increasing violence against humanitarian workers in Afghanistan, the statement added. The decision to resume repatriation came after UNHCR took additional security precautions for its staff and received assurances from the governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan that they are combating militants who have targeted aid workers as part of a campaign against the interim government of Afghanistan. Control in the border areas of both countries has been tightened, the press release statement maintained. "There will certainly be different measures inside Afghanistan as to exactly where some of the centres are, [staff] deployment, the precautions that staff will take. And there will be some procedural changes," Redden explained. "But the overall shape of the programme and the nature of packages given to those choosing to return will essentially be the same," he stressed. Refugees from Pakistan are given a travel grant, food and other items of assistance on arrival at UNHCR encashment centres in Afghanistan, the statement said, adding that training of the agency's repatriation staff began this week. More than 1.5 million Afghans were assisted to return home from Pakistan in 2002 following the removal of the Taliban government in Kabul. A further 350,000 refugees went back last year. Although the current suspension of the programme coincided with the winter when few refugees return to Afghanistan, several thousand Afghans have moved back without UNHCR assistance since November, the statement said. The voluntary repatriation programme is carried out under a Tripartite Agreement with UNHCR and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan that runs through 2005. It enshrines the principles of voluntary, gradual returns to ensure the numbers who go home can be absorbed in Afghanistan and do not flow back into Pakistan.