UN helps returnees integrate into Afghan schools

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad on Wednesday signed a two-year agreement with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on educating Afghan refugee children inside Pakistan, as well as in their home country of Afghanistan. “Afghan children going to refugee schools inside Pakistan and those continuing their education after repatriation back in Afghanistan, are the main beneficiaries of this deal,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Under the agreement, both agencies will work to integrate returnees into the Afghan education system partly through recognition of their school certificates inside Afghanistan. UNHCR is currently supporting primary education for Afghans in refugee camps across Pakistan. At present, some 105,000 Afghan students are enrolled in more than 250 primary schools in over 80 UNHCR-administered camps in the two provinces of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP). According to the UN refugee agency, over 2.7 million Afghan refugees have returned from Pakistan to date under the UNHCR-assisted voluntary repatriation programme that began in 2002. “Repatriated Afghan students have been facing problems in getting admission to schools inside Afghanistan on the basis of their educational certificates issued here [in Pakistan], even though those were certified by the Afghan Consulate in Pakistan,” Nasir Sahibzada, working with UNHCR’s Afghan refugee education programme, told IRIN from Peshawar. “The curriculum being taught in refugee schools inside Pakistan was adapted from that of Afghanistan’s. However, things have changed a lot over last 25 years and now students are facing problems in continuing their education after repatriation,” Sahibzada explained. Under the agreement, UNESCO would liaise with the Afghan and Pakistani governments and the appropriate ministries to try and resolve the differences between the two countries’ education systems.