WFP REPORTS THOUSANDS OF AFGHAN REFUGEES EXPELLED FROM PAKISTAN EMPTY-HANDED

Sat 30 December 2023:

Concerns about the situation of Afghan refugees being deported from Pakistan and their uncertain fate are increasing daily and thousands of these people have been returned to Afghanistan empty-handed, the World Food Program (WFP) said.

WFP published a video on Wednesday of an Afghan immigrant who, according to him, was deported after 14 years in Pakistan.

This immigrant said without mentioning his name: “We didn’t bring anything from Pakistan, we brought one or two blankets. We did not bring anything else. Now we don’t know what to do. There is nothing we can do.”

In November, the interim government of Pakistan officially started the process of deporting more than 1.7 million undocumented Afghan immigrants.

According to the United Nations and the International Rescue Committee, nearly half a million Afghans have been deported from Pakistan to Afghanistan in the last two months.

At the same time, Deputy Prime Minister for Administrative Affairs Maulvi Abdul Salam Hanafi, said on Wednesday during a ceremony to commemorate the 44th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union that so far 800,000 Afghan refugees have been forcibly deported by Pakistan and Iran and that they are being processed by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, Acting Minister of Interior, also said that countries should treat Afghan immigrants according to international standards.

Haqqani said: “We say that something that is the norm of the world or the common principles that they have made, should be treated in the same light.” “Afghan immigrants are in trouble. They returned over the course of a month during the cold winter and moved here,” he said.

This comes amid an ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country.

According to United Nations, more than 29 million Afghans need humanitarian aid.

Despite the fact that various human rights defenders have repeatedly asked the Pakistani authorities to stop the forced deportation of Afghan immigrants, Islamabad has paid no attention to these requests.

Meanwhile, various institutions, including the World Food Program and the IEA government, announced that they are providing aid to the refugees returning from Pakistan.

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