Voluntary repatriation: Enhanced return package offered to Afghan refugees

Various non-food items included in package; free transport offered.

PESHAWAR:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has offered an enhanced package to Afghan refugees who wish to return to their country under the voluntary repatriation programme.

According to the programme, every registered Afghan refugee family voluntarily returning from Pakistan to Afghanistan during the remainder of 2012 would be offered an enhanced return package, which includes various types of non-food items including blankets, quilts, plastic sheets and a number of other items.

The enhanced package is aimed at encouraging Afghan refugees to repatriate to their homeland. There are more than 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees in the country, with more than 0.6 million of them residing in refugee camps.

The enhanced packages will be distributed among the returning families at the Chamkani, Timergara and Baleli voluntary repatriation centres (VRC) in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

Registration cards issued to Afghan refugees by the government of Pakistan are due to expire on December 31 this year; however, the voluntary repatriation operation would continue after 2012.

“Even after the expiry of their cards, they will be considered refugees and cannot be repatriated by force as UNHCR wants them to go back to their homeland with dignity and on a purely voluntary basis,” said UNHCR spokesman Qasir Khan Afridi while talking to The Express Tribune.

Afridi added that returning refugee families would also be offered a one-time free transport facility from the VRCs to the encashment centres in Afghanistan, where each individual in the family would be provided cash assistance worth $150.

“Free transportation was not previously available and we have enhanced the non-food package too for these two months,” Afridi said.

Meanwhile, the provincial home department has announced that even registered Afghan Refugees would not be allowed to stay in the province once their cards expire. However, the federal government and UNHCR are currently discussing the matter, and the government is considering several options in this regard.

In K-P, non-registered Afghan refugees have already been expelled from 45 refugee camps. However, most refugees have simply shifted to nearby villages in the country instead of repatriating to Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2012.