Regularising stay of refugees

Over the next six months, officials at the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) will be engaged in the daunting task of registering Afghan refugees at 32 odd centres spread out in the country. Balochistan currently hosts 16 registration centres while Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which is home to a little more than half of the Afghan refugee population, has 11 centres. Punjab hosts 10 per cent of the Afghan refugees living in the country. There is a growing realisation among the leading number crunchers that the latest figure of unregistered Afghans may be equal to or actually exceed the registered Afghan population in Pakistan. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has put the number of Afghan refugees in the country at 1.3 million while one of its local partners estimate that the undocumented refugee population could be as high as 1.6 million. If that is true, the registration process that opened this week will take much longer than expected. Out of the one million target set by the Pakistani authorities, up to 600,000 Afghan nationals are likely to be counted from K-P alone.

The latest exercise involves the distribution of Afghan citizen cards and though these will be given out for a temporary period, it will help ease some of the immediate fears of the refugees: for instance, they won’t be quite so afraid of arbitrary police harassment, detention or even the threat of deportation under the Foreigner’s Act. Some 200,000 unregistered Afghans had returned to their country in 2016 to avoid deportation. This time around the registration process will be monitored with the coordination of representatives of the Afghan ministry for refugees and repatriation. The entire registration initiative was drawn up as part of the National Action Plan with the aim of compiling accurate data about Afghan nationals and keeping tabs on their activities so that militants could not infiltrate into their ranks and pose as refugees.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 19^th, 2017.

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