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Pakistan to Close Refugee Camps Near Afghan Border
Arab News, Agence France Presse
KABUL, 29 August 2003 — Afghanistan, Pakistan and the UN refugee agency will close four refugees camps near the border and relocate or repatriate some 50,000 Afghans residing there, officials said yesterday after a two-day meeting in Kabul.
Afghanistan’s Deputy Minister of Refugees and Repatriation Mohammad Naeem Ghiacy told reporters Kabul, Islamabad and the UNHCR agreed that the number of camps close to the border should be reduced for a lack of proper facilities.
Two camps in the Chaman area of Balochistan province bordering southern Afghanistan and the two Shalman camps on the Khyber Pass in North West Frontier Province established after the US-led assault to topple the Taleban regime would be closed.
Hasim Utkan, head of UNHCR operations in Pakistan, said 50,000 people will be affected by the camps’ closures. “But since we are in a voluntary repatriation mode it’s either repatriation or relocation,” he said.
He said the camps had been established as close as five kilometers to the border in the emergency situation following the fall of the Taleban.
“This is not in line with international principles; camps have to be at a certain distance from the border and something which is acceptable in an emergency situation is more difficult to accept” two years later, he said.
UNHCR coordinator for refugee repatriation Salvatore Lombardo said the process of closing the camps would begin in February 2004.
“Refugees would be offered two options, either assistance to return to Afghanistan or relocation to another camp where they would continue to be offered assistance by the UNHCR,” he told AFP.
He said the four affected camps were unsatisfactory both in terms of security and quality of life, as even water must be trucked in to some of the camps. Some 200 refugee camps dot the Pakistani landscape.
An estimated 400,000 refugees have returned from Pakistan and Iran so far this year, well below last year’s 1.8 million who returned with UN help.
Filipo Grandi, head of UNHCR operations in Afghanistan, said most of those refugees who returned last year had strong reasons to come back to Afghanistan — such as a job, house or land — or were very poor and seeking better opportunities.
“It is quite normal that those for whom a decision was easy to make made it right away and came back, especially those living in cities in Pakistan who were the bulk of last year’s returns,” said Grandi.
“Those who did not come back were the ones in the middle ... those who have some form of support in Iran and Pakistan and for whom a decision to return is more difficult and that’s why we see a slower pace of return.”
He also said last year’s massive re-entry of refugees had strained Afghanistan’s capacity to absorb them.
Amnesty International in June warned that the “deteriorating” security situation in Afghanistan was not conducive to promoting voluntary repatriation of refugees.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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