(New York) - The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) should reverse its newly-announced policy of promoting voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today.
UNHCR issued a statement last week advising governments hosting Afghan refugees to offer incentives and assistance to all who wish to repatriate, and to resume processing the applications of Afghans with pending asylum claims.
"By advocating for repatriation, UNHCR is sending the message to governments that conditions in Afghanistan are sufficiently stable for a large-scale return," said Rachael Reilly, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch. "This is misleading and is contradicted by conditions on the ground."
Human Rights Watch investigations in recent months have found that conditions inside Afghanistan are still extremely unstable and that risk of persecution exists for certain groups. Continuing factional rivalry between General Abdul Rashid Dostum's Junbish forces and General Atta Mohammad's Jamiat troops has created a security vacuum in northern Afghanistan, leading to a rise in attacks on humanitarian aid agencies and Afghan civilians. Armed conflict between the two factions has increased over a wider area of the north in recent weeks, affecting at least four different districts during the week of July 8.
At the same time, ethnic Pashtuns, a minority in the north, continue to flee targeted violence, rapes of women and children, seizure of farmland and demands of money by local commanders in Farah and Faryab province. Human Rights Watch has also documented ongoing lawlessness and abuses by warlord forces in the south and west of the country.
In recent statements, UNHCR has cautioned governments not to rush repatriation before conditions are stabilized in Afghanistan - in direct contrast to its most recent position. On July 2, UNHCR announced that it was suspending assisted returns from Herat to Faryab and Samangan provinces and to parts of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan, because of continued insecurity. In May 2002, the UNHCR spokesperson in Kabul, Yusuf Hassan, called on governments not to put undue pressure on Afghanistan by prematurely promoting repatriation.
"UNHCR has itself admitted that conditions are unsafe in parts of Afghanistan. So why advocate for refugees to return now?" said Reilly.
UNHCR has suggested that if Afghans with pending asylum claims are encouraged to voluntarily repatriate, it would relieve the pressure on asylum systems. But Human Rights Watch said this argument plays into the hands of governments such as Australia and the United Kingdom that are already putting pressure on Afghan refugees to return. Australia, for example, has begun making unqualified statements that Afghan refugees, recognized under the Refugee Convention but only given Temporary Protection Visas, will have to go home when those visas expire or may even face cancellation of their visas. The Australian government is currently offering Afghan detainees 28 days to accept financial incentives to return while threatening that they will have to go back without the money if their asylum claims are rejected.
In addition to the security problems facing returnees, many were not in fact returning to their homes but merely becoming internally displaced in urban centers like Kabul and Herat, contributing to the existing strain on infrastructure and resources, Human Rights Watch said.
"There are serious doubts about the absorption capacity of Afghanistan and whether humanitarian agencies have the funding and resources to cope with the large-scale returns that UNHCR is promoting," said Reilly.
On July 11, the chair of the 15-nation Afghanistan Support Group meeting in Geneva noted a budgetary shortfall of $777 million for reconstruction and rehabilitation and described the situation in Afghanistan as "fragile." UNHCR also announced that 25 percent of its $271-million aid operation for Afghanistan was not funded and that it still needed $70 million.
Former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, has also raised concerns about the speed of refugee returns, especially from Pakistan. Ogata, who addressed the Security Council on July 19 following a visit to Afghanistan, said the scale of the return "could overwhelm the absorptive capacity of receiving communities," which "could have grave implications for the security environment as well as the political stability of Afghanistan."
Human Rights Watch is also concerned that increasing harassment, arbitrary arrests and detention in Pakistan, combined with lack of assistance for Afghans, could be pushing refugees to return and undermining the voluntariness of their decisions.
Human Rights Watch called on UNHCR to postpone its promotion of voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan. UNHCR's own guidelines state that voluntary repatriation should not be promoted unless "the large majority of refugees" can return "in safety and with dignity" and the country of origin has "provided a formal guarantee, or adequate assurances for the safety of repatriation refugees."
"These preconditions clearly have not been met in Afghanistan," said Reilly.
