More than 100,000 Afghans returned home this year, reports UN agency

The number of Afghan refugees voluntarily returning home from Pakistan and Iran has topped 100,000 so far this year, the United Nations reported today, noting that this is almost twice as many as in 2009.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said some 95,000 of the returnees are from Pakistan. Almost 70 per cent of these are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, with the rest from Balochistan, Punjab and Sindh.

Returnees have cited economic reasons, difficulties in Pakistan, and local improvements in security in some parts of Afghanistan as the reasons for coming back, UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva.

A third of the returnees head to eastern Afghanistan, another third to the central region, and the rest mainly to the northeast, he added.

The Afghanistan voluntary repatriation programme remains UNHCR’s largest worldwide, with more than 5 million Afghans, or 20 per cent of the country’s 25 million people, estimated to have gone back home since 2002.

The number of returns can vary significantly from year to year. Last year the number of Afghan returnees from Pakistan and Iran was only 54,000, compared to the 278,000 that returned in 2008.

UNHCR had attributed the decline to insecurity, limited economic opportunities and political insecurity in the wake of the Afghan presidential polls held last August.