Pakistan says 450,000 undocumented Afghans have returned home

Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s special envoy to Afghanistan said Wednesday that nearly 450,000 Afghan nationals have returned home since the October announcement that all undocumented migrants would be deported by November 1.

Addressing a seminar in Islamabad he said: “Those who have been asked to leave are the illegal immigrants here. They don’t enjoy the refugee status.

“So, almost 450,000 [Afghans] have left. They knew that they were illegal stayers here in Pakistan,” he said.

This came the say day that the United Nations renewed its warning that Afghans returning from Pakistan “face a precarious, uncertain future” in the crisis-hit country.

Durrani said however that nearly 2.3 million documented Afghan nationals, including 1.4 legal refugees, hosted by Pakistan are not being asked to leave.

Meanwhile, the U.N. World Food Program said Wednesday that returnees are unsure how they will survive a devastating winter in Afghanistan, where more than 6 million people are already internally displaced nationwide.

“These families arrive at the worst of times and face a bleak future in a country where one-third of people do not know where their next meal will come from,” said Hsiao-Wei Lee, the WFP country director. “Leaving behind their homes and livelihoods, they return to start over in a country that gives them few economic opportunities and where many struggle to survive.”

The WFP said it urgently needs $26.3 million to support 1 million returnees from Pakistan arriving in Afghanistan and help them through the winter and into the first months of next year.