Photo credit: Aljazeera
“The Government of Pakistan should host an international multilateral stakeholders’ conference aimed at addressing the challenges related to voluntary repatriation and third-country resettlement of Afghan refugees,” according to Muhammad Abbas Khan, Chief Commissioner for Afghan Refugees (CCAR) at the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON).
The Nation reports that Mr Khan added that the main objective of the conference should be to encourage the Western countries to increase their quotas and expedite the process for admitting Afghan applicants into their countries from Pakistan. He was speaking at a seminar titled “Challenges and Opportunities in Repatriation and Resettlement of Afghan Refugees” (organized by the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS).
He underscored the importance of international burden-sharing, urging global stakeholders to enhance resettlement opportunities for Afghan citizens in Pakistan. He said there were about 600,000 Afghan resettlement applicants registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). However, the body’s quota for resettlement applications for the year was only 8,000.
He also highlighted the immense challenges associated with repatriating Afghan refugees. He said, forced displacement was a cross-cutting issue, encompassing social, political, economic, and security dimensions and increasingly intersecting with climate change.
He also said Afghanistan’s fragile absorption capacity and limited infrastructure made reintegration of the returning Afghan citizens a challenging proposition. He further stressed the importance of addressing psychological adjustment challenges and called for efforts to create a secure and investment-friendly environment in Afghanistan to support sustainable integration.
