Voluntary Afghan repatriation reaches 2.7 million

The number of Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan under the voluntary repatriation assistance programme of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has passed the 2.7 million mark, with over 415,000 repatriated so far in 2005, the agency has announced. “It is very encouraging. Of all solutions for refugees, returning to their homeland is the most desirable," Indrika Ratwatte, UNHCR assistant country representative, said in Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Friday. Following the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the UN refugee agency launched its voluntary repatriation assistance programme in 2002 from Pakistan and Iran – the two primary host countries of the Afghan diaspora. Under the programme, nearly 1.6 million Afghans returned from Pakistan in spring 2002, followed by some 340,000 in 2003 and more than 380,000 in 2004. To date, more than 415,000 Afghans have returned to their homeland this year since the programme resumed in March after a three-month winter break. But the challenges in processing such a caseload are many. Given that almost as many as 1.6 million people returned in the first year of the programme, UNHCR introduced a unique iris-recognition technology to verify the identity of all returnees, thereby ensuring returnees only claimed assistance once. 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. While the technology has no effect on the eye, it does, however, detect anyone who has previously been through the procedure before. Iris verification is mandatory for every Afghan over the age of six wishing to receive UNHCR assistance for repatriation. According to media reports, over 1,600 Afghan families were processed without iris testing from 8 to 13 September from the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar after hundreds of Afghans waiting in long queues for registration attacked the UN refugee agency's site office in protest against the slow pace of repatriation. UNHCR’s voluntary repatriation assistance programme from Pakistan is governed by a tripartite agreement between Kabul, Islamabad and the UN refugee agency, that runs till December 2006. Under the programme, Afghan returnees are eligible for transport assistance ranging from US $4 to $37 per person, depending on the distance to their destination. Additionally, they also receive a small monetary grant to help them with additional costs.