ISLAMABAD, July 18: The UN refugee agency announced on Wednesday that the voluntary repatriation of Afghans picked up this year with over 41,000 refugees returned to their home country so far. The repatriation this year has gone up by 11 per cent over the past year.

The repatriation of refugees has now entered the 10th year and the voluntary repatriation programme of the UNHCR has helped more than 3.7 million Afghan refugees to return home from Pakistan, the UN agency said in a statement.

It said 23,664 DPs returned from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 8,578 from Balochistan, 2,883 from Sindh and 5,916 from Punjab and Islamabad.