The UN Migration Agency (IOM) inaugurated a substantial expansion of its Torkham Transit Center in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province for undocumented Afghan returnees from Pakistan on Sunday.
More than 55,000 undocumented Afghans have returned from Pakistan between this year 01 January and 18 May- double the number of returns during the same period in 2016- the highest return year on record. IOM is expecting nearly 600,000 undocumented Afghans to return from Pakistan and Iran by the end of 2017.
Given the fragile humanitarian context in Afghanistan and widening conflict, undocumented returnees face unique challenges, both on arrival and as they seek to reintegrate in Afghanistan after as many as three decades in exile in Pakistan. Priority needs include shelter, food, livelihoods, access to clean water and basic services like health care and education.
IOM’s Deputy Director General, Ambassador Laura Thompson, visited the Torkham border crossing on Sunday, 19 May as part of her three-day mission to Afghanistan. IOM’s DDG also met with Afghanistan’s CEO Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the Ministries of Refugees and Repatriation and Social Affairs, and UN and donor partners. The 2017-18 edition of the Return of Qualified Afghans programme, a long running Japan funded project which has seen the return of 586 Afghans from Iran since 2001 to take part in 12 month job placements with government agencies, was also launched.
IOM’s Deputy Director General remarked that, “It has been two years since my last mission to Afghanistan. During that time the lives of vulnerable Afghans have continued to become more and more precarious with spiraling levels of conflict and growing pressure on local host communities as influxes of returnees and IDPs stretch their resiliency. IOM is committed to working in support of the Government and the people of Afghanistan across the migration spectrum from point of entry with the provision of immediate assistance for families to seeking out longer term reintegration solutions at the community level.”
IOM has been providing post-arrival humanitarian assistance to undocumented returnees from Pakistan at the Torkham border crossing since 2012. In order to better respond to the continuing and growing influx of returnees, IOM recently completed a significant expansion of one its four Transit Centers located on Afghanistan’s borders with Pakistan and Iran, where returnees receive assistance including household supplies, food, temporary accommodation, medical care and onward transportation assistance to their final destination in Afghanistan.
The expansion work at the Torkham Transit Center has doubled the accommodation capacity, with the ability to host 30 families or 210 individuals at any one time. The capacity of the Transit Center warehouse has also been increased allowing IOM to stock 1,000 family assistance packages and the clinic has doubled in size. A number of other improvements have been put in place to provide more services for returnees through partners and improve efficiency, including the addition of Child Friendly Spaces from UNICEF, Mine Risk Awareness Education by UNMAS/DRC-DDG as well as psychosocial and gender-specific support.
IOM’s Chief of Mission and Special Envoy in Afghanistan, Laurence Hart, emphasizes the need for the humanitarian community to coalesce around the returnee issue stating that “the scope and scale of the return is impossible for anyone agency to address alone. With 100,000s of vulnerable persons returning to Afghanistan sometimes after decades away IOM is working closely with the government, the UN and NGO partners to ensure a comprehensive response. IOM’s Transit Centers where a diverse number of agencies collocate and provide specialized services underlines this approach.”
IOM aims to assist 100% of undocumented returnees from Pakistan, with immediate humanitarian assistance linked to medium to longer-term community- based reintegration solutions that address the entire spectrum of needs from point of first arrival.
Support for IOM’s post-arrival humanitarian assistance for returnees is provided by the governments of Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, the Central Emergency Fund and the European Union (ECHO) with reintegration funding provided by the European Union’s DG DEVCO..
At the beginning of May, IOM issued an updated funding needs document outlining the need for USD $52.8 million in support to assist 292,000 returnees from Pakistan and Iran through March 2018.
For further information, please contact Nasir Ahmad Haidarzai in Kabul (+93 794 199 542, nhaidarzai@iom.int)