ISLAMABAD, Oct 6: Afghans living in Pakistan and Iran are set to vote on Oct 9, in what would be the world's largest refugee voting programme, International Organization for Migration (IOM) said here on Wednesday.
A press release issued by the IOM said that during the four-day registration campaign in Pakistan, from Oct 1 to 4, preliminary reports showed that around 740,000 Afghans living in Pakistan were registered to vote in the Afghan presidential election.
The director of the IOM's Out-of-Country Voting programme, Peter Erben, said extending the voter registration period by another day had been the right decision as on the final day 175,000 more Afghans were registered.
"The total preliminary figure of 740,000 registrants is in the upper range of what we had hoped for and it shows the enthusiasm that Afghans have for democratic elections," Mr Erben said.
"It is safe to say that the registration phase of our operation was a great success." The percentage of women who participated was, as expected, relatively low with only 28 per cent of those who registered being women.
Preliminary voter registration details released by the IOM showed that total number of registrants in the NWFP was 410,000 with 27 per cent being women.
In Balochistan, the total number of registrants was 320,000 with the women constituting 27 per cent of the total.
In Islamabad, some 10,000 Afghans registered to vote for the elections with women constituting 16 per cent of the registrants.
