Human Rights Watch: Pakistan Forcing Return of Afghan Refugees

There is a strong dose of irony in this report beginning with the surprising, to me at least, fact that more than a million Afghans thought that going to Pakistan would improve their lives. At the same time, Pakistanis are leaving Pakistan to look for better lives in Europe. 

Now, Pakistanis, who make the worst refugees in Europe, just ask anyone in Rochdale, or Rotherham, or any of several other cities in the UK, find Afghans unacceptable. I wonder how many complaints there will be when the UK starts deporting Pakistani child rapists back to Pakistan?

By Ed Adamczyk  UPI

Afghan children play outside a religious school at Afghan Refugees Camp in Karachi on February 26, 2015. Human Rights Watch released a report Monday saying the United Nations was complicit in Pakistan's practice of forcing Afghan refugees to return to their country through coercion. File Photo by Zafar Ahmed Khan/News Lens Pakistan

Pakistan forced the repatriation of nearly 600,000 Afghan refugees through coercion and abuse since July, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

The New York-based humanitarian organization released a 76-page report Monday saying Pakistani authorities have forced hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing poverty, war and unemployment in Afghanistan to return to their homeland. It adds that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' office is complicit in Pakistan's efforts to remove the refugees by "failing to call for an end to the coercive practices."

The returnees to Afghanistan include 365,000 registered refugees. Pakistan has about 1.1 million Afghan refugees, about 750,000 of whom are unregistered, Human Rights Watch said.

"After decades of hosting Afghan refugees, Pakistan in mid-2016 unleashed the world's largest recent anti-refugee crackdowns to coerce their mass return," said Gerry Simpson, author of the report. "Because the U.N. refugee agency didn't stand up publicly to Pakistan's bullying and abuses, international donors should step in to press the government and U.N. to protect the remaining Afghan refugees in Pakistan."

Many returning Afghan refugees were persuaded to leave Pakistan by a doubling, to $400, of cash support from the United Nations, the report said, although the refugees typically had no home to which to return. Many reported they felt threatened by a wave of anti-Afghan hostility in Pakistan.

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