400,000 Afghans repatriated over last two months, UN refugee agency reports

Two months after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched an assistance programme for returning Afghans, more than 400,000 people have travelled home to Afghanistan, the agency reported today.

Along with the Afghan Interim Administration, UNHCR has also collaborated with neighbouring Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan to help the returning Afghans, a spokesperson for the agency said in Kabul.

Returns from Pakistan alone have topped 370,000 since 1 March, when the programme began, according to UNHCR spokesperson Sarah Russell. In the three weeks since a similar scheme was started in Iran, 23,000 Afghans have gone home while the rest of the returnees have come from Tajikistan.

UNHCR was also continuing to help internally displaced people (IDPs) in Afghanistan to return to their homes, with more than 30,000 so far receiving assistance. In Nangarhar, the agency has moved more than 3,000 IDPs from Sar Shahi camp back to their villages. Earlier this year, 8,000 people in the Panjshir Valley were returned to the Shomali plain north of Kabul. UNHCR, the Afghan Ministry of Repatriation, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have also helped more than 15,000 people go back from the old Soviet compound in Kabul to Shomali.

Meanwhile, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has launched a public information and advocacy campaign to promote education among returnees and refugees.

The effort began with the opening today of an information centre in Kabul, which will deliver messages on the need to register children - especially girls - at school, and provide information on reintegrating into the Afghan education system. The centre will also provide practical information on procedures for school registration as well as opportunities for teachers to find employment within the education system.

More information centres will be set up over the next two weeks in Jalalabad and Herat, and in refugee camps, check points and areas of resettlement within the next two to three months, UNICEF said.