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Three million Afghans could return to their country this year, a UN refugee official said Friday, warning that the repatriation flow is placing intense pressure on an already major humanitarian crisis.
Iran and Pakistan have introduced new policies affecting displaced Afghans, with Tehran already having given four million "illegal" Afghans until July 6 to leave Iranian territory.
"What we are seeing is the undignified, disorganized and massive exodus of Afghans from both countries, which is generating enormous pressures on the homeland that is willing to receive them and yet utterly unprepared to do so," the UNHCR representative in Afghanistan, Arafat Jamal, said during a video press conference from Kabul.
"Of concern to us is this scale, the intensity and the manner in which returns are occurring."
Over 1.6 million Afghans have already returned from Pakistan and Iran this year, the large majority from Iran, Jamal added.
The figure already exceeds the UNHCR's initial forecasts of 1.4 million for 2025.
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