GENEVA, July 22 The UN Children's Fund said on Wednesday that about half of an estimated two million people who fled fighting in Swat and Fata could remain displaced for the rest of the year.

A senior Unicef official said it was essential to provide adequate security in their home regions and ensure that displaced children were able to return to school in September.

“Everybody is hoping that people come back to their village ASAP,” said Unicef emergency office director Louis-Georges Arsenault.

“But at the same time we also believe... it would be prudent to assume let's say that by September one million could have gone back and that we would still have one million displaced through the year,” he told journalists.

Mr Arsenault, who carried out a joint mission to Pakistan recently, also underlined concerns about ongoing disruption to children's schooling.

About one million children were at risk of not starting the school year, he added, blaming it on the destruction of schools in the Swat valley —especially girls schools — a shortage of facilities for the displaced or the fact that some 4,000 schools were needed as shelter for those who fled.

“The population are telling us they want to go back as soon as possible. They are saying that the first thing they will request is security,” Mr Arsenault said.

The Unicef official bemoaned the overall international response, underlining that the local population in neighbouring areas had shared the burden of those who fled.

“If it wasn't for the host communities, who have welcomed something like 1.4 million people, we would have had a crisis,” he said.

“I think it needs to be recognised that communities were the first port of call for the humanitarian response, it wasn't the government, it wasn't the UN, it wasn't the NGOs.

“We also have to say it has a limit,” he added, pointing to the example of a house of eight who had welcomed about 50 “guests”.—AFP