Situation Overview
During 2017, the government has taken key policy decisions regarding registering the undocumented Afghans and institutionalizing measures to support Afghan refugees. IOM Pakistan is supporting the government through participation in the Provincial Taskforce on Documenting the Unregistered Afghan Nationals.
According to the IOM Weekly Flow Monitoring Snapshot 6th to 12th August, a total of 82,019 refugees and undocumented Afghans returned or were deported to Afghanistan since January 2017. As per current estimates, approximately 0.7 million undocumented Afghans continue to reside in Pakistan. In coordination with IOM Afghanistan, IOM Pakistan is supporting information collection, dissemination and in-kind assistance to returnees.
At the time of writing, 30,238 internally displaced families have returned to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 2017 and the remaining 44,442 currently displaced families are set to return in the next year with facilitation from governmental and humanitarian stakeholders. IOM continues to provide critical and multi-sectoral life-saving information to Internally displaced people (IDPs) through a combination of formal and informal communication channels.
Multi-Year Humanitarian Programme for Natural Disaster Preparedness, Response and Recovery in Pakistan
The Natural Disasters Consortium (NDC) continues to support at-risk and affected communities through its’ multi-sector preparedness, response and recovery activities. In this quarter, the program continued to deliver customized recovery packages to communities affected by disasters and maintain preparedness stocks for potential disasters in 2017. The consortium has finalized recovery plans for 2017-18 and continues to explore opportunities for innovative pilots on climate smart villages, cash harmonization, resilience-building, and so on. The programme is a four year programme funded by DfID/UKAid.
Research on Improved Shelters for Responding to Floods
During the quarter, physical testing of the wall panels at NED University in Karachi for rainwater test was completed while flood water tests are expected to be completed in August 2017. Relevant governmental and non-governmental counterparts, including the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) and the End User Group, are consulted regularly for their inputs to enhance the findings, final products, and dissemination strategies. ARUP has completed desk studies on topics related to costs, sustainability, building environments, daylighting and structures of differing typologies constructed in southern Pakistan during 2010-12 and this will feed into the Construction Guide and Final Research Report. ARUP International in consultation with IOM, continues to investigate similar, relatively user friendly ways to present the tool.
The first draft of this construction guide is expected to be circulated by end of October, 2017.