ISLAMABAD, April 16: All unregistered Afghan refugees living in the country will now be considered ‘illegal’ as the government deadline set for their registration or voluntary return to Afghanistan expired on Sunday.

Pakistan had set April 15, 2007 deadline and asked all Afghan refugees either to get themselves registered by obtaining the Proof of Registration (PoR) cards or voluntarily go back to Afghanistan. Those failed to go back to Afghanistan will now be considered illegal and face the laws of Pakistan.

In order to encourage Afghan refugees’ voluntary return, the UNHCR had announced an assistance package of $100 per person. The refugees having failed to avail of this opportunity will no more be entitled to this package.

A spokesman for the refugee agency told this reporter that about 5000 Afghan refugees might have failed to obtain PoR cards.

He said the UNHCR would not be responsible for these refugees now and it would also not facilitate their return to Afghanistan.

He said the refugees having valid PoR cards could stay in Pakistan till 2009. They will also be provided the aid package on their voluntary return to Afghanistan. For this purpose, he said, the UNHCR would launch a repatriation scheme for registered Afghan refugees from April 19, 2007. At present, there are about 2.15 million Afghan refugees having valid PoR cards.

The spokesman said that during the past one and a half month, more than 200,000 unregistered Afghans had voluntarily returned to Afghanistan with the UNHCR assistance.

He said on the last day of the deadline, around 1,215 Afghan families and 9007 individuals had left Pakistan from three UNHCR Voluntary Repatriation Centres (VRC) — two in the NWFP and one in Balochistan.

“It was a challenging task for the UNHCR to assist 200,000 Afghan refugees’ return to their country in just six weeks but our staff worked continuously to process cases of all refugees who approached the repatriation centres.