HRW accuses Pakistan, UN of forcing Afghan refugees home

peshawar — A human rights group charged on Monday that Pakistan is forcing hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees back to their homeland, which is still beset by war and crushing poverty. It also said that a $400 stipend the United Nations refugee agency gives to refugees who return to Afghanistan is tantamount to a bribe to convince reluctant Afghans to leave Pakistan. Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghan refugees for decades at the cost of its law and order and economy.

“The exodus amounts to the world’s largest unlawful mass forced return of refugees in recent times,” the Human Rights Watch report claims.

Both the UN and Pakistan denied the allegations. In an interview, Indrika Ratwatte, Pakistan’s country representative for the UN refugee agency, said there was police harassment and arrests of Afghan refugees in mid-2016, particularly in the border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but it was ended and refugees who returned, went home voluntarily.

“There were incidences of pressure and harassment especially in KP but they were addressed,” said Ratwatte. “But does it amount to forced return. No. it doesn’t.” Still, the report was harsh in its criticism of the UN agency for not condemning what it insisted is Pakistan’s forced return of the refugees.

Meanwhile, Pakistan cited security concerns for seeking Afghan refugees’ return to their homeland, particularly after several brutal attacks by militants in Pakistan, which the government linked to insurgents hiding out in Afghanistan.

The worst attack was in December 2014 against an army public school in which 150 people were killed, most of them children.

Tens of thousands of returning refugees were settled in a makeshift camp on a barren piece of land in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, which Afghan elders in Pakistan described as desolate and dangerous. —