Call for renewed support for Afghan refugees

Marking World Refugee Day, aid workers on Tuesday called for international support for new initiatives to assist more than 2.6 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan as well as those hosting them. “We remain committed to facilitating their [Afghan refugees] safe and dignified return home. But we must also take a holistic approach to assist both refugees and their host communities to increase their self-sufficiency,” Mustafa Elkanzi, Country Director of the US-based charity, International Rescue Committee (IRC), said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Through its Pakistan programme, operational since 1980, the IRC has been supporting Afghan refugees in Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) with health, education, vocational training, clean water, sanitation, psychosocial counselling and information about repatriation. Currently the agency supports some 230,000 Afghan refugees living in the two provinces. “We are also expanding our efforts to include the development of local Pakistani communities who share their limited resources with the refugee population and many of the community support services are already extended to host communities,” Elkanzi said. IRC, together with Italian NGO Trade Unions Institute for Development Co-operation (ISCOS) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), has launched a new initiative to assist the sustainable return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan. The programme, which also includes support for communities hosting refugees in Pakistan, would benefit nearly a million people. “The new IRC-ISCOS-NRC programme would provide Afghan refugees with much-needed marketable skills to establish self-reliance, as well as the information and legal support to make confident decisions about return,” Heng Djin Tjik, Programme Coordinator and Deputy Director of IRC, said in Islamabad. For host communities, aid agencies intend to boost access to clean water and sanitation by rehabilitating tube wells and distribution systems and by constructing waste disposal facilities.