UNHCR resumes Afghan repatriation programme

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Wednesday resumed its repatriation assistance programme for Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan after a week-long break due to the parliamentary and provincial elections in Afghanistan held on Sunday. "All the repatriation centres across the country have reopened today. Around 2,000 Afghans comprising some 385 families have been processed at different locations," Babar Baloch, a UNHCR spokesman, said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Under the UNHCR voluntary repatriation assistance programme, close to 400,000 Afghans have returned so far this year from Pakistan, while the number amounts to more than 2.6 million since the start of the programme in 2002. Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency has resumed processing Afghan refugees using its iris scanning system from the northwestern city of Peshawar in North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The centre remained closed for about two weeks after hundreds of Afghans waiting in long queues for registration attacked the agency's site office in the first week of September in protest against the slow pace of repatriation. Iris verification – serving as a record and reducing fraud - is mandatory for every Afghan over the age of six wishing to receive UNHCR assistance for repatriation. Meanwhile, UNHCR has increased travel assistance for returning Afghans by 10 percent. "Afghans returning under UNHCR's voluntary repatriation assistance programme will now receive between US $3 to $37 per person, depending on the distance to their destination," said the UNHCR spokesman. In addition, each returnee is entitled to get $12 to help them resettle in Afghanistan, he added. UNHCR's voluntary repatriation assistance programme for Afghan refugees living in Pakistan operates under the tripartite agreement between the two governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan and UNHCR. The agreement has recently been extended to December 2006.