A senior Red Cross official has called for the return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan to occur “in a more staggered way” so Afghanistan can better absorb them.

“It will be important to work with the government of Pakistan in 2024 to ask that if there are going to be returnees,” that they arrive “in smaller numbers at a time just so it is more manageable on the Afghan side,” said Alexander Matheou, regional director, Asia Pacific Region for the International Federation of the Red Cross, Voice of America (VOA) reported on Saturday.

Speaking in the Qatari capital, Doha, Matheou told journalists on Friday the challenges facing Afghan returnees from Pakistan was one of several pressing issues he discussed with the officials of the Islamic Emirate in Kabul.

“You will be aware that over half a million have crossed the border over recent months, and it is likely that we will see large numbers of new arrivals in the coming months,” he said.

“I imagine this is probably the largest population flow in a short period of time in Asia since the population movement from Myanmar into Bangladesh in 2017,” he added. “So, it is a significant event.”

Since October, Pakistan has expelled more than 500,000 Afghan refugees who lacked proper documentation.

Matheou noted many of the returnees have lived in Pakistan for decades and are ill-equipped to begin a new life in a country that to them is unknown, without government or international support.

He described the returnees as being in generally poor health, especially the children, who account for nearly half of all returnees.

“The evidence of that was we visited clinics where they reported a real spike in cases of acute malnutrition coming from the arrivals from Pakistan.

“We visited routine immunization programs of the IFRC and the Afghan Red Crescent in the villages, and there it was clear looking at the children that as well as being anemic, you could see wasting and stunting among the children,” he said.