UNHCR to close more camps in Pakistan

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is planning to close some of the camps housing Afghan refugees in parts of Pakistan's two western provinces of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which border Afghanistan. "The exact schedule has yet to be finalised. However, the [refugee] camps located in the western tribal region along NWFP and also those in Chagai district of Balochistan would be closed or consolidated in the next two months," Jack Redden, a UNHCR spokesman, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. At present, the UN refugee agency administers about 130 refugee camps, home to over a million Afghans across the South Asian nation. The refugees are provided with free education, medical care, water and sanitation at the camps. "The Afghans will be given the option of relocating to other camps [within Pakistan] or voluntary repatriation back to Afghanistan availing UNHCR's assistance package," Redden said. In a similar move in 2004, the agency closed 12 new camps in NWFP and Balochistan set to temporarily house refugees fleeing the war that unseated the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan in late 2001. More than 39,000 out of 65,000 refugees listed in new camps in NWFP returned, while 43,000 from a total of 127,000 Afghans repatriated from Balochistan, under the additional voluntary repatriation assistance package of the UNHCR, while the rest moved to old camps. The UN refugee agency's voluntary repatriation programme from Pakistan operates under a special tripartite agreement between UNHCR and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan and will run until March 2006. Nearly 2.3 million Afghans have returned from Pakistan since 2002 under UNHCR's voluntary repatriation assistance programme. The agency estimated a further 400,000 would return this year, the agency spokesman said. Meanwhile, a UNHCR-sponsored Afghan Return Commission Working Group (RCWG) delegation is currently visiting Pakistan to update the refugee community about the situation in their homeland and removing other concerns they might have about returning. The nine-member RCWG team, composed of delegates from five northern provinces of Afghanistan; Balkh, Sar-I-Pul, Jowzjan, Samangan and Faryab, has been visiting refugees across all four provinces of Pakistan.