Schooling, food security worry returnees

While displaced people continue to return from camps to their homes in Swat, Buner and other northwest areas of Pakistan affected by conflict, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns that about a million internally displaced persons (IDPs) could remain displaced until December.



“Everybody is hoping people come back to their villages ASAP. But at the same time we also believe it would be prudent to assume that by September one million could have gone back and that we would still have one million displaced through the year,” UNICEF emergency office director Louis-Georges Arsenault, who recently visited Pakistan, told the media in Geneva.



Arsenault said about a million children were at risk of not starting school in September, mainly due to the widespread destruction of school buildings by the Taliban in Swat and the fact that 4,000 schools continue to shelter IDPs.



The emergency response unit of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government has said 907 families had returned as of 15 July. Colonel Wasim Shahid of the army’s special support group for IDPs said 285,187 people had returned to Swat and 36,792 to Buner district.



“We are now beginning the process of repatriating people housed in schools as many of those from camps have returned of their own accord,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, NWFP Information Minister, told IRIN. Two camps in Mardan, the district that housed the largest number of IDPs, have already been closed and Hussain said two more would be “shut down soon as residents vacate them”.

There is so much to do here, everything is in ruins, it will take months for life to return to normality.

Returnees’ concerns



However, families wishing to return have many concerns. “The school my daughters attended in our village in Swat was destroyed last year. It has not re-opened. If we go back now, they could miss a whole year,” Zulema Bibi, an IDP staying with her brother in Peshawar, capital of NWFP, told IRIN. She said her brother had suggested the girls be enrolled at a school in the city.



According to media reports, between 170 and 200 schools for girls were destroyed by militants in Swat.



While Hussain has promised they will be “re-built on an emergency footing”, adding that “children have already started going back to schools”, people remain sceptical.



“There is so much to do here, everything is in ruins, it will take months for life to return to normality,” Muhammad Khan, 40, a businessman who recently returned to Mingora, the main city in Swat, told IRIN.



Arsenault has said people who remained displaced would need continued humanitarian support. The overall international response had been insufficient and it was host communities who had offered the bulk of support to IDPs.



However, these hosts are now anxious that their “guests” return to their own homes. “It has been a big strain to support 13 additional people. We want them to return now,” said Saifullah Khan, who has been hosting his relatives from Swat since 15 May.



Apart from education, IDPs continue to worry about food security and other related issues. Although the NWFP government schemes were being run to support returning families, Javed Hassan, in Buner, said “the prices of basic items are very high. There are frequent shortages and it is hard to manage.”



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