Pakistan Allows Afghan Refugees to Stay For One More Year Amid International Appeals

Pakistan, Islamabad – To match the international concern, registration cards of nearly 1.5 million Afghan refugees have been extended for one year in Pakistan. This move comes after a senior UN official demanded that Pakistan should refrain from deportation. 

 The PoR cards of 1.45 million Afghan refugees are valid until June 30, 2024, but the federal cabinet on Wednesday, in a meeting presided over by the prime minister, approved extending the validity of their PoR cards up to June 30, 2025, added the statement. 

 This was made following talks between Shehbaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Grandi met in Pakistan this week and told the country to reconsider the planned repatriation of Afghan refugees. 

 Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described to Grandi how Pakistan is burdened with a sizeable refugee population and called upon the international community to appreciate this reality and show some responsibility. The world has to recognize Pakistan’s effort, and this burden must be shared, Sharif’s office said on Tuesday. 

 Afghanistan has been receiving support from millions of Pakistanis since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The last wave came in August 2021, soon after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, between 600,000 to 800,000 Afghanis fled to Pakistan. 

 The following year in November, Pakistan started a much disputed and dangerous repatriation program that intends to send back millions of Afghanis irrespective of their status in the country. This decision was highly criticized by international organizations and human rights groups. 

 Pakistan currently shelters approximately three million Afghan refugees, of whom about 2.4 million immigrants have some legal documentation. Almost 1.5 million people use a UNHCR Proof of Residence card, and an Additional 800,000 people also have an Afghan Citizenship Card (ACC). 

Currently, an official from the Afghan Commissionerate, which is a government body assigned to refugees’ work, said that more than 600,000 refugees have gone back to Afghanistan, and over 30,000 have been expelled, while the rest have gone willingly. 

 UNHCR Chief Grandi also hoped that Pakistan, having halted the program in the meantime, would look for better solutions. This is the occasion when we cannot afford to move at a slow pace and need to be more visionary for the Afghan people in Pakistan, said Grandi. 

 This Afghan Commissionerate official, who preferred to remain anonymous, concurred that no expulsion and deportation from border crossings are possible in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or Balochistan provinces. “Nowadays, there is no tension on the border whatsoever, and Afghan families do not experience any threats of arrests,” the official said on Wednesday. 

 Further extending the PoR cards and suspension of deportations can be viewed as measures to deal with the problem of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Nevertheless, the case is still volatile, and it must still engage in talks and seek the assistance of the global community to guarantee the protection of the refugees’ rights and safety. 

 Thus, global society’s role as the guarantor, or at least as one of the carriers of the humanitarian ordeal that Pakistan is still experiencing, gradually grows critical. Thus the fate of Afghan refugees in Pakistan for the future and indeed the future of the Afghan refugees in other countries across the globe depends on continued collaboration and commitment towards long-term feasible solutions for refugee populations that have been in forced displacement for more than three decades now.