June 20, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Sani 04, 1428

RAWALPINDI, June 19: The deterioration of the security situation in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the lack of infrastructure and job opportunities in Afghanistan continue to be major concerns expressed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the occasion of World Refugee Day being observed on June 20.

Without the political and financial engagement of all partners, including the Pakistan government, donor countries, UN agencies and NGOs, development initiatives in the refugee affected areas will not succeed. Such support would also help move these programmes into the mainstream of national development programmes, says UNHCR.

Though only 22 per cent of Afghans in the country have invoked security concerns as their reason for not returning home, the 2005 census revealed that the majority of those originating from the border provinces do not intend to go back soon.

Accordingly, UNHCR has started discussions with the government to move from traditional basic assistance exclusively for Afghans to local development initiatives in refugee-affected areas that would also benefit the local Pakistani population.

However, security has worsened in some parts of the country, especially in Balochistan, where restrictions on movement are often imposed. Conditions are also difficult in NWFP along the Afghan border, to which the UN has no access.

In general, however, Afghan refugees in Pakistan have enjoyed a very tolerant regime, thanks to the generosity of the Pakistani people and the government’s respect for international standards, the UN refugee agency says.

According to the Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions, Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind, the government has devised a strategy in collaboration with UNHCR for repatriation of all Afghan refugees in phases by the end of December 2009.

The level of voluntary repatriation — some 133,000 returnees in 2006 — has fallen significantly from previous years. This is largely due to the reluctance of many refugees, who are well established in Pakistan, to uproot themselves once again. Others are fearful of returning home to areas of tribal conflict, or are too poor to make new lives for themselves in their war-ravaged homeland. Indeed, the Pakistani authorities have delayed the closure of four large camps as planned in the face of resistance from Afghans, the agency says.

Based on a recent census conducted by the government and UNHCR, it was estimated that some 2.5 million Afghans remained in Pakistan in August 2006. Of these, approximately a million were living in 85 settlements in NWFP and in 10 settlements in Balochistan.

An assessment carried out in the settlements indicated that the refugee communities still need basic assistance in the areas of education, health, water and sanitation. The government and UNHCR agree that not all Afghans remaining in Pakistan are of concern to the office. These people require solutions that go beyond humanitarian assistance.

The UN refugee agency announced on Tuesday that the number of refugees in the world had increased for the first time since 2002, largely as a result of the crisis in Iraq.

The refugee world has become highly complex. UNHCR currently cares for 20.8 million people in all corners of the world. It pursues many roles including providing material aid for civilians who may number just a handful or many hundreds of thousands in any given exodus. It is involved in highly technical legal work assisting asylum seekers, helping governments establish refugee regimes and helping to shape international humanitarian law. To help it fulfil these various roles, the agency is involved in many research, analysis and evaluation projects.

UNHCR’s “2006 Global Trends” report, released on Tuesday, shows the number of refugees under the agency’s mandate rising last year by 14 percent to almost 10 million, the highest level since 2002. At the same time, the share of other categories of people under the agency’s different mandates also grew sharply, in most cases as a result of improved registration systems and more accurate statistics.