Refugee pre-screening begins

The first phase of screening Afghan refugees in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province started on Monday, UNHCR confirmed to IRIN. “Many of the refugees are excited about the fact that the process has actually started,” the agency’s spokesman in Islamabad, Yusuf Hassan, said. The move follows the signing on 2 August of a landmark screening agreement between Pakistan and the UN, which means that thousands of Afghans can be given temporary protection by Pakistan. The 20-day process of pre-screening will be carried out in the Nasir Bagh camp in the provincial capital, Peshawar, and the nearby makeshift Jalozai refugee camp. Hassan explained that the first phase involved some 30 screening teams interviewing heads of households and registering them by gathering basic information, such as names and places of origin. With a total of around 130,000 refugees residing in the two camps, Hassan said the teams consisted of two people, one from the Pakistani government and the other from UNHCR, accompanied by an interpreter. He added that the number of teams would be increased to 55 by the end of August. Hassan, however, could not put a time on how long it would take to complete the screening process. “At the moment, we estimate each team to interview eight families per day,” he explained. The second phase of screening involved more comprehensive interviewing and final decision making on the refugee status of the Afghans, he said. A total of 52 interview rooms had been set up in the two camps, he added. In an effort to explain how the screening process would work, UNHCR ran a massive information campaign at Nasir Bagh and Jalozai prior to the first phase, distributing some 10,000 leaflets in Dari and Pashtu, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan. The UN has said each family opting to go home will be given US $100 in cash and 150 kg of wheat flour to help with resettlement in its homeland. There are some 2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and the authorities have long contended that the country can no longer “cope with the burden”. The Pakistani government suspended an earlier attempt by UNHCR to screen Afghan refugees in Jalozai.