Focus on controversy over refugee screening process

While UNHCR says its pre-screening programme, currently under way in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, is proceeding smoothly, some Afghans and aid workers remain sceptical. “The screening process is confusing. We are afraid and highly uncertain about our future,” Zahir Khan Jabbar Khel, a camp elder told IRIN. “Most of us don’t want to go back, but it seems that the screening will force us to do that. I have been living in Nasir Bagh for the last 22 years, but I still don’t know to what category of refugees I belong, and where I will end up in the screening process,” he said. Despite a massive information campaign by UNHCR, “this is the case with most of the people living in the camp”, he maintained. UNHCR and Islamabad signed the landmark agreement on 2 August to initiate the screening of approximately 180,000 residents of the Nasir Bagh, Jalozai, and the new Shamshatoo refugee camps in and around Peshawar, the provincial capital. The joint screening project, which came in response to a radical shift in Pakistan’s policy on Afghan refugees, means that thousands of Afghans could gain temporary protection by the country. Prior to 1998, all Afghans were considered prima facie refugees in Pakistan. Today, however, Islamabad argues it can no longer shoulder the burden of hosting such a large refugee population, and has called upon the UN to facilitate repatriation. Commenting on the issue, Professor Rasul Amin, director of the Afghanistan Study Centre, told IRIN that the new policy was being motivated by a number of factors. “Primarily, the ruling regime in Afghanistan has lost credibility and are short of fighters to fight in the conflict raging north of Kabul,” he said. “Refugees are a consequence of the protracted conflict in Afghanistan,” Amin said. “They will naturally return home once peace and normality are restored, but not the other way round,” he asserted. Amin added that the root cause of the recent refugee exodus was not drought, but rather the collapse of the state structure that has impelled Afghans to flee their country. “Most of the recent arrivals belong to northern Afghanistan, where the fighting still rages, and have come to Pakistan seeking security,” he said. Meanwhile, the advocacy and protection coordinator for the International Rescue Committee, John Sifton, told IRIN: “The combination of Nasir Bagh and Jalozai for screening is strange, because Nasir Bagh and Jalozai host quite diverse populations. Most of the Jalozai inhabitants are recent arrivals, while the last refugees settled in Nasir Bagh a decade earlier.” He went on to say: “The Pakistani authorities sometimes say that that Afghan refugee presence creates problems, but there is no proper documentation to support this assertion.” “By signing the screening agreement, the government of Pakistan has subscribed to some parts of customary international law promulgated through the 1951 Refugee Convention,” Sifton said, highlighting the positive effects of the agreement. He suggested that Afghans needed to be screened comprehensively, and that this kind of partial screening created resentment and made people feel harassed. The UNHCR and Pakistani government joint screening teams have already begun pre-screening in Jalozai and Nasir Bagh. The process consists of two phases. In the first, all the refugees who want to return will be assisted under a UNHCR package to do so. During the pre-screening, the head of each household is asked what he wants to do. If he chooses not to return, he is given permission to stay, whereupon it will be determined whether the individual has a well-founded fear of persecution. In the second phase all those in need of protection will be resettled on new locations, while the rest will be repatriated without benefits. Nancy Dupree, who heads the resource and information centre of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, described the methodology of the screening inadequate. “They are doing it in such a hurry that enumerators or screeners are not even properly trained. They hold too much power, and most of them have scant knowledge of Afghanistan,” she told IRIN. “In Iran, a similar effort at screening failed,” she added. She warned it would it set a dangerous precedent whereby humanitarian considerations became subservient to political considerations. Countering that assertion, the UNHCR spokesman in Islamabad, Yusuf Hassan, told IRIN: “The registration is proceeding well. All the UNHCR team leaders are specialists in international law with years of experience in screening.” He added that local staff had received four weeks of extensive training. Coupled with the fact that Pakistan is becoming increasingly hostile towards Afghans, are complaints from refugees about police harassment. “Ever since the new Afghan refugee policy has been initiated there have been increased incidents of police harassment,” the head of the Afghan Commission of Human Rights, Lal Gul told IRIN. “Many people think they are being harassed into going back to Afghanistan,” he said. Regarding the issue of camps being established within Afghanistan to facilitate the return of refugees, Haji Wahidi, the head of the Afghan NGOs Coordination Bureau, told IRIN there were barely any sustainable livelihood resources because of the drought and war. “It is true that the prices of many essential commodities are less in Afghanistan, but there is no employment to support purchasing power,” he said. “The idea of setting [up] refugee camps inside Afghanistan is ridiculous - no one knows when war can commence in any part of Afghanistan,” he said. Moreover, it was very difficult to ensure the provision of basic health and education services in those camps, he added. Afghans constitute the world’s largest refugee community and Pakistan hosts more than 2 million. The Afghans in Pakistan came in three waves. The first was in the wake of the Soviet invasion in the early 1980s, when they were welcomed and received all kinds of support. The second wave came after the collapse of the communist regime in 1992 and the subsequent civil war. The third comprises the desperate victims of war and drought. The situation is compounded by the fact that Pakistan is a signatory to neither the 1951 Refugee Convention nor the 1967 Refugee Protocol. There is little if any refugee-related legislation in Pakistan. Asked what the best solution for Afghans would be in the meantime, Haji Hayatullah, head of the Council of Understanding and National Unity of Afghanistan, told IRIN: “The screening process needs to be reviewed thoroughly, and it needs to be postponed until stability returns to Afghanistan.” He added that under the present circumstances, the repatriated refugees would surely come back to Pakistan. “The situation is so desperate that some people lost their lives while fleeing to Pakistan,” he explained.