Refugee camp closures to go ahead

Islamabad intends to adhere to a timetable of closures of various Afghan refugee camps and settlements across the country, a government official said on Tuesday, responding to reports that extensions were being considered to allow camp residents time to leave in safety and with dignity. "The deadlines will remain the same for all the Afghan refugee camps whether in the western tribal region or in Balochistan province or for Afghan settlements on the outskirts of capital. We have no plans to revise any of them at all," Dr Imran Zeb, director of the Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR), a state body dealing with Afghan refugees, said in the capital, Islamabad. According to a comprehensive census of Afghans living in Pakistan carried out in March 2005, over three million Afghan nationals have been living in different parts of the country for over a quarter of a century. Of them some 1.29 million are living in over 100 camps administered by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and are mostly located in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan province. Most of the rest have settled in urban areas and receive little assistance. In recent months, the Pakistani authorities have announced plans to shut many Afghan refugee camps located in areas bordering Afghanistan citing security reasons. An announcement was made in the first week of August that over 30 refugee camps with some 105,000 Afghans, located in the Kurram and Bajaur agencies of the western tribal belt would close by the end of the month. Afghan nationals living on the outskirts of and in informal housing in parts of Islamabad have also been asked by the capital authorities to vacate their homes by 15 September. The ruling could affect 30,000 Afghans, according to census statistics. All the Afghans that have to leave the capital have been given two options: repatriation to Afghanistan or relocation to another camp. According the UNHCR, as the deadline for the closure of refugee camps draws near in the tribal belt, the number of Afghans approaching the refugee agency to help them repatriate has been rising. "By Monday, some 13,000 Afghans from Kurram agency had gone through all the UNHCR procedures to receive repatriation assistance while another about 30,000 have registered with the agency so far to return," Jack Redden, a UNHCR spokesman, said in Islamabad. UNHCR has assisted more than 2.5 million Afghans to repatriate from Pakistan since the voluntary repatriation programme started in 2002, including some 242,000 so far this year. Under the standard UNHCR assistance package, each individual going home is eligible for transport assistance ranging from $3 to $30, plus $12 to help resettlement inside Afghanistan.