Over 2.2 million Afghans have returned - UNHCR

More than 2.2 million Afghans have returned home so far from Pakistan since the voluntary repatriation programme of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) started in 2002, an official of the agency told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad, on Monday. "Over 300,000 Afghans have returned to their homeland since the UNHCR voluntary repatriation programme resumed in March this year," Jack Redden, the spokesman for UNHCR in Pakistan, said. All the Afghans living in Pakistan wishing to return can avail themselves of UNHCR assistance, consisting of a travel grant ranging from 3 to US $30, plus additional grants to help with re-integration in Afghanistan. The UN refugee agency currently operates six departure centres and four Iris Verification Centres (IVCs) in four cities across Pakistan. The IVCs check the identity of refugees and help to reduce fraud. Since March, a total of 184,000 Afghans who passed through these centres were living outside established refugee camps, while 135,000 came from such camps, the agency said. Some 173,000 repatriated Afghans passed through the Peshawar departure centre in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) which has two IVC facilities. Another 83,000 refugees were processed through two departure centres at Quetta in the southwestern province of Balochistan. While 33,000 passed through two centres located in the southern port city of Karachi in the province of Sindh, around 30,000 were processed in Islamabad. Under the voluntary repatriation programme of the UNHCR, nearly 1.6 million refugees returned in 2002 following the fall of the Taliban regime, while only 340,000 repatriated during 2003. With 300,000 returnees having departed from Pakistan this year, the refugee agency estimated that over a million refugees were still residing in camps in Pakistan. However, in the absence of any comprehensive census, there is no specific figure for the number of refugees living in urban settlements throughout Pakistan. The UNHCR voluntary repatriation programme from Pakistan operates under a special tripartite agreement between UNHCR and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will run until March 2006. According to an agency statement, more than 292,000 Afghans have received their repatriation assistance from UNHCR centres inside Afghanistan.