UNHCR processing Afghans without testing, following attack

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Pakistan is now processing repatriation cases of Afghan refugees from the northwestern city of Peshawar without an Iris test after hundreds of Afghans waiting in long queues for registration attacked the agency's centre on Wednesday in protest against the slow pace of repatriation work.

"The angry refugees pelted UNHCR vehicles with stones and destroyed office equipment, including computers, furniture and Iris checking machines," Yaris Khan, head of the UNHCR repatriation centre said in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Iris verification is mandatory for every Afghan over the age of six wishing to receive UNHCR assistance for repatriation. However, according to reports about 1,500 Afghans were processed on Thursday without iris testing while the centre remain closed on Friday.

The unique iris-recognition technology was introduced by UNHCR in September 2002 to ensure that assistance was only provided to deserving Afghan refugees. The process detects anyone who has previously been through the procedure and tries to claim assistance again.

Presently, the UN refugee agency has four repatriation centres with iris checking equipment in Peshawar and Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, serving returnees from all over Pakistan, including the provinces of Punjab, Sindh and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

Two other centres with the equipment are working in western Kurram and Bajaur agencies in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where a heavy caseload of refugees has been processed over the past few weeks after Islamabad said it would close many camps by the end of August.

The iris verification process takes an image of the returnee's eye then stores it in the form of a code recording the person's name, gender, age and destination. The technology has no effect on the eye. Approximately 500 families can be processed through the system a day, according to UNHCR.

In recent weeks, eviction notices and police harassment have contributed to a higher number of returnees. Over 113,000 Afghans returned with UNHCR's assistance package in August, including more than 92,000 from NWFP, about 13,000 from Balochistan, some 2,200 from Sindh and around 6,000 from Punjab.

UNHCR has assisted more than 2.6 million Afghans return to their homeland since its voluntary repatriation assistance programme began in March 2002, including about 370,000 so far this year. The assistance provides each returnee with a travel grant ranging from US $3 to $30 depending on the distance to destination, with another $12 per person to help them re-establish themselves and resettle.

This voluntary repatriation assistance programme of the UNHCR is governed by a tripartite agreement between the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and UNHCR until December 2006.