07 March 2004	Sunday	15 Muharram 1425

PESHAWAR, March 6: The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) will assist more than 400 Afghan refugees to return home from Shalman refugee camp on Sunday, initiating a programme that will see the camp in a waterless valley near the Khyber Pass closed before the end of March.

The repatriation will be followed on Monday by the relocation of about 50 families to another refugee camp inside Pakistan. Both repatriation and relocation will then continue with all 1,656 families expected to be moved by March 23.

An officials press release of the UN agency said that a UNHCR survey in January found that 47 per cent of the residents wanted to return to Afghanistan with the remainder asking to move to Kotkai Camp, another refugee camp established for those fleeing the conflict in Afghanistan which was triggered by the 11 Sept 2001 attacks on the United States. Shalman was chosen as the first of the new camps to close, in what will be a continuing process, the release added. It was located in a hostile location where assistance was expensive and difficult to provide.

The UNHCR, the released said, expects to continue the process of consolidating camps, which have shrunk in population during the voluntary repatriation programme that it has operated for the past two years. Shalman was built to hold up to 26,000 refugees but now has a population of 10,347.

The 67 families with 417 individuals, who asked to return to Afghanistan on Sunday are going home under this year's UNHCR voluntary repatriation programme. The programme, which has assisted more than 1.9 million Afghans to return from Pakistan since 2002, began its third season on March 3. All returning refugees over the age of six are given a computerised iris test that verifies no one has previously been tested and received assistance to return to Afghanistan. Each refugee receives a travel allowance, which varies with the distance of home and $8 instead of the food and other material assistance given in previous years.

While those returning to Afghanistan use the UNHCR grant to arrange their own transportation, the UNHCR will form the convoys to take refugees to Kotkai camp. The camp is in Bajaur agency but in an area with ample local water. It can easily accommodate 819 families from Shalman who asked to relocate. The UNHCR will move about 50 families per day, with all 5,372 individuals who chose to relocate moving in about 16 days. The new camps initially sheltered 300,000 refugees fleeing the 2001 war in Afghanistan, but the total population of nine camps including Shalman, in North West Frontier Province and six in Balochistan now house about 200,000 refugees.

The UNHCR intends to continue the process of consolidating the new camps this year and next. Plans for closing two camps in Balochistan await agreement with the government on the alternative camp where those who do not wish to be repatriated will be relocated. Further consolidation in NWFP is also planned.

The UNHCR last year closed the awaiting area, an unofficial camp at Chaman on the border between Balochistan and Afghanistan. More than half the 19,000 residents opted to return to Afghanistan, while the rest were relocated to the existing new camp of Mohammad Kheil.

Under its voluntary repatriation programme, UNHCR has assisted some 1.9 million Afghans to return to Afghanistan from Pakistan since the fall of the Taliban and has made provision to assist up to 400,000 more to go home this year.-PPI