Quaid-e-Azam University Road, Diplomatic Enclave 2, G-4Islamabad, Pakistan P.O.Box # 1263
Tel: +92 51-2829502-6 ext. 2421/2428 Fax # +92-51-227-7683

UNHCR helps more than 3,000 Afghans to repatriate from Karachi in March

March 30, 2004

KARACHI, 30 March (UNHCR) - The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) assisted 624 refugees to head back to Afghanistan from Karachi on Tuesday, raising to 3,256 the number who have gone home from Pakistan's largest city since the voluntary repatriation programme resumed four weeks ago.

"It is time to go, we have lived in this country for long and it is the first time in the last 13 years that we feel that everything back in Afghanistan is beginning to move on the right track," said Nauroz, a refugee heading to Kabul. "There are jobs and security now in Afghanistan."

The 121 families with 624 individuals left Songal departure center at Camp-e-Jadeed, a largely Afghan area of Karachi, and drove off toward the two exit points used by UNHCR for the repatriation programme: Chaman in Balochistan and Torkham in North West Frontier Province.

All refugees over the age of six years must go through computerised iris tests in either Quetta, Balochistan, or Peshawar, NWFP, the two main cities before the exit points. The iris scan can detect immediately if someone has been tested before, preventing people from claiming assistance a second time.

Eight families with 43 people headed to Afghanistan via Chaman and 113 families with 581 individuals went toward the Torkham exit. The departure, the 15th from Karachi since repatriation resumed, consisted of 12 buses and three trucks to carry the belongings.

The Tuesday departures brought the number of returnees leaving Karachi to 3,256 since the programme resumed on 3 March. Last year UNHCR assisted 35,409 Afghans to return from Karachi, after a flood of 166,625 in 2002.

"The Afghan refugees are again repatriating to their homeland as they have new hope of sustained life in their country of origin," said Urooj Saifi, head of the UNHCR office in Karachi.

"After a massive repatriation exercise in the year 2002 when the new arrivals had returned in large numbers the year 2003 was a more thought out and informed decision to repatriate," he said.

UNHCR has assisted more than 25,000 Afghans to repatriate from all parts of Pakistan since the beginning of March. By Monday these included 15,162 refugees from NWFP, 3,690 from Balochistan and 3,267 from Islamabad and Punjab.

The UNHCR voluntary repatriation programme, under which Afghans wishing to go home receive a package of assistance, has helped 1.9 million Afghans to leave Pakistan since it began in 2002. This year some 400,000 Afghans are expected to return.

Since early 2002, UNHCR has also helped 679,572 Afghans return from Iran. Another 269,480 Afghans have returned from Iran without UNHCR assistance.

On arrival in Afghanistan refugees receive a travel grant, which varies from $3 to $30 depending on the distance, plus $8 per head instead of the package of food and non-food items like household utensils that was given in previous years. Families who dismantle their houses in Pakistan and take the structural poles home receive another $5.

On 29 March, the Tripartite Commission, which groups UNHCR and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan, agreed to make more intensive efforts to inform refugees of improved conditions in areas of likely return in their homeland.

The agreement that established the Tripartite Commission, which oversees the voluntary repatriation programme, remains in effect until early 2006. The status of Afghans who remain in Pakistan after that date will be decided later. There are an estimated 1.1 million Afghans in refugee camps in Pakistan and an unknown, but substantial number, in other parts of the country.