UNHCR starts registration of Afghans in North Waziristan

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has launched a special drive to help repatriate Afghans living in refugee camps in the North Waziristan agency of Pakistan's western tribal belt on Wednesday. The Pakistani authorities announced in May, the closure by the end of June of over a dozen refugee camps located in the area housing about 30,000 Afghans because of security concerns. "The UNHCR teams will visit all the refugee camps in North Waziristan from June 8 - 11, to register those families wishing to avail [themselves of] the refugee agency's assistance package for voluntary repatriation," Jack Redden, a UNHCR spokesman, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday. Afterwards, the heads of the families would have to travel to Bannu district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), located some 40 km away, in order to receive the Voluntary Repatriation Forms (VRFs) required to secure assistance. "UNHCR office at Bannu will operate daily from 15 June to 29 June to process the requests. However, only those families registered this week in North Waziristan will be eligible to get the VRFs," Redden said. The Afghan refugees living in the camps in North Waziristan have been informed about the options that either they may choose to be repatriated to Afghanistan or to relocate to other areas. After being issued with the registration forms, Afghan families will have to undergo a mandatory iris-scanning test at Khost [capital of the Afghan province of Khost] inside Afghanistan. "Iris verification was a requirement for every Afghan over the age of six wishing to receive the UNHCR repatriation assistance package," the UNHCR official explained. The UNHCR standard repatriation assistance package includes a travel grant of US $3 to $30 per person depending on the distance to the recipient's destination in Afghanistan and another $12 per capita to help them re-establish themselves in their homeland. Meanwhile, the government also intends to close several other camps located in the western belt of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and in southern Balochistan province. "So far, no formal announcement has been made for the precise dates but preferably would be before the winter approaches," Redden noted. The UN refugee agency has assisted some 2.4 million refugees to return from Pakistan to Afghanistan since the voluntary repatriation assistance programme started in 2002. That includes nearly 112,000 Afghans that have gone home so far in this year since the UNHCR resumed repatriation programme in March 2005 following a break in the winter.