ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Minister for States and Frontier Regions Lt. Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch on Tuesday informed the Senate that over 3.9 million Afghan refugees have been voluntarily repatriated since June 2002.
In a written reply during Questions Hour, he said that around 55,604 individual registered Afghan refugees had been repatriated to Afghanistan from January to October 15, 2015.
He said at present, there were 1.53 million registered refugees and estimated one million un-documented Afghans living in Pakistan.
The repatriation of registered Afghan citizens was guided by the principle of voluntarism as embedded in the Tripartite Agreement signed between government of Pakistan, Afghanistan and UNHCR valid up to December 31, 2015.
As per Federal Cabinet decision on July 25, 2013 the Afghan refugees having valid Proof of Registration (PoR) cards could stay in Pakistan till December 31, 2015.
In the 25th Tripartite Commission meeting held in Islamabad on March 11, 2015, the government of Afghanistan and Pakistan along-with UNHCR have reaffirmed their commitment for engagement and coordination for devising a joint comprehensive policy envisaging voluntary returns.
The said policy would be finalized soon and submitted to the federal cabinet for approval and further guidelines.
To another question, he said plan for rehabilitation of internally displace persons after the Zarb-e-Azb operation had been prepared.
The financial requirements for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the FATA TDPs have been worked out at Rs 80.362 million.
Source: APP
