December 24, 2002	Tuesday	Shawwal 19, 1423

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PESHAWAR, Dec 23: Speakers at a seminar stressed the need for a joint Pakistan-Afghanistan committee to address legal, social and economic problems of the refugees living in the country.

The Advice and Legal Assistance Centre (ALAC), a non- governmental organization, arranged the one-day seminar on “harassment by local community and protection of Afghan refugee” in the provincial metropolis on Monday.

The speakers expressed their concerns over the plight of the refugees in Pakistan, who they said were being harassed by law enforcers, and asked the transitional government in Afghanistan and human rights organizations to help them and try to resolve their problems.

They demanded of the Pakistan government to release the Afghan prisoners arrested by the police in minor cases.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other relief agencies also came under fire as the participants said that the UN and other organizations had failed to rehabilitate the displaced people in the refugees camps in Pakistan and the internally displaced Afghans.

The president of the Afghan Organization of Human Rights and Environmental Protection, Abdur Rehman Hotaki, suggested to form a Pakistan-Afghanistan commission, representing civil society bodies, UNHCR and government departments, to address legal, social and economic problems of the refugees, living in Pakistan. He said that the commission should conduct surveys in the prisons throughout the country to ascertain the exact number of Afghan prisoners.

He said that his organization had sought the assistance of the UNHCR and Afghan commissionerate to get the refugee children and women released, but both the bodies did not give any positive response.

Mr Hotaki pointed out that the 1951 convention had mandated the UNHCR to grant full protection to refugees and safeguard their rights, but in Pakistan the UN agency had failed to fulfil its legal responsibilities.

He said that the UNHCR also failed to curb the “recycling problem”. They — Afghans who are sneaking back into Pakistan through unfrequented routes — were getting financial assistance from the UNHCR voluntary repatriation at Takhta Baig and Khyber Agency through fake registration documents, he claimed.

The documents, he said, were being prepared at the Jalozai refugee camp near Peshawar, and added that the issue had been brought in the notice of the concerned authorities, but in vain.

The chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Afrasiab Khattak, called upon the host countries, Pakistan and Iran, to honour the 1951 convention and the 1976 protocol and acknowledge the rights of the Afghan refugees.

He said that a three-member committee visited Kabul the previous month to ascertain the conditions of the internally displaced Afghans and fresh returnees.

Former Afghan minister Babrak Shinwari asked Afghan president Hamid Karzai to discuss the problems of the refugees of his country with Islamabad.

He said that soon after the downfall of the Communist regime in Kabul the UNHCR and the donor countries immediately stopped food and financial assistance to Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Mumtaz Ahmad, an official of the Afghan commissionerate, said that a large number of displaced Afghans, living in the urban areas of Pakistan had no legal documents and they (DPs) had yet to identify their status.

Islamabad had already stopped the registration of Afghan nationals, he said and added that a large number of the Afghan population in Pakistan did not have the legal documents to establish their nationality, which further complicated the refugee problem.