Pakistan has extended by six months a deadline for Afghan refugees to register with the government, a refugee official said on Wednesday, a day before the deadline was set to expire.
Pakistan has the world’s second largest refugee population, with more than 1.5 million registered, and about a million unregistered, refugees from Afghanistan, most of whom fled the Soviet occupation of their country in the 1980s.
The number of Afghans voluntarily returning home has plunged this year as violence worsens in Afghanistan, where the government and its US allies are fighting a stubborn Taliban insurgency.
An Afghan boy holds empty wooden boxes at a market in Peshawar. -Reuters
“The prime minister has approved another six-month extension in the deadline,” Imran Zeb Khan, the chief commissioner for Afghan Refugees, told Reuters in an interview.
“But Pakistan can’t ensure that these refugees will return. That cannot happen without support from Afghanistan and the international community which need to create the right conditions for their repatriation.”
Khan said Pakistan would hold a tripartite meeting with Afghanistan and the United Nations refugee agency on July 19 to plan the way forward.
Afghan women, clad in burqas, stand outside a shop at a market in Peshawar. -Reuters
Afghan women, clad in burqas, stand outside a shop at a market in Peshawar. -ReutersThe comments came soon after officials told Reuters at least 500 Afghan refugees were arrested in a northwestern border province and deported as a security risk. (Reuters)
