GENEVA, Sept 23: Well over 400,000 Afghan refugees, many living outside the country for more than two decades, have returned home this year under United Nations programmes, a spokesman said on Friday.

Ron Redmond of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told a news briefing that the returns brought the total since the programmes got under way in 2002 to 4.2 million Afghans — nearly all from Pakistan and Iran.

Of this year’s returnees, some 366,000 had been living in Pakistan and 49,000 in Iran, he said.

Redmond told reporters a recent decision by the Pakistan government to close all refugee camps in federally-administered tribal areas close to the Afghan border on security grounds had triggered a sharp increase in the numbers wanting to go home.

—Reuters