08 May 2002
More than 500,000 Refugees Return to Afghanistan
(Aid officials concerned about their long-term future) (920)
By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Refugees are returning to Afghanistan at a rate that
exceeds all expectations. The number of returnees has surpassed
500,000, according to a May 8 announcement from the U.N. High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), nine weeks after an international
assistance effort began. As international agencies scramble to provide
returnees with the support they need to get home and to reintegrate
into their communities, officials are also concerned about whether the
returnees have a sustainable future in a land still parched by four
years of drought, and still sifting through the rubble of more than 20
years of armed conflict.
"Many Afghans are returning home with next to nothing," said U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers May 8 in New York. "Donors must
ensure that the massive repatriation underway is sustainable for the
long-term. That means that rehabilitation and development aid must
reach rural towns and villages immediately."
An exodus over the last two decades left more than 4 million Afghan
refugees in neighboring Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
UNHCR has been working to aid this crisis population through the
years, so the agency's involvement in the region is nothing new,
Lubbers said.
The fall of the Taliban, the creation of an Interim Administration,
and the promise of elections in the future have transformed the
world's largest refugee crisis into the world's largest repatriation
and rehabilitation program, according to UNHCR documents.
UNHCR opened repatriation centers in Pakistan on March 1 and in Iran
on April 7 to support this human migration. At the centers, returning
refugees receive wheat flour and assistance packages containing
supplies such as blankets, cooking stove and pots, and hygiene items.
They also receive travel grants in varying amounts, as much as $100,
providing the funds for transport from the border regions to their
home villages.
Those supplies may be adequate to help refugees return to
long-abandoned homes, but the big question is what do they find when
they get there? Some observers and humanitarian groups have raised
concerns that refugees will be met with a difficult homecoming and
will not find the resources to sustain themselves.
"People have some idea of what they're coming back to," Joyce Leader,
director of the Office of Assistance for Asia and the Near East at the
U.S. State Department, said in a Washington File interview. "The
refugees don't come back blind." She said refugees have made contacts
with family members and friends in their home regions and have made
decisions to return based on the belief that they will face good
prospects.
UNHCR is also mindful of these concerns, so reintegration of refugees
back into their communities is a significant component of the broad
mission that the agency is now performing in Afghanistan, Lubbers said
at a Washington briefing May 7. "There is now a real possibility for a
new Afghanistan in peace," he said. "We have an obligation to the
people and to the neighboring host countries to be very creative in
the process of repatriation."
Housing and water are two top priorities in the UNHCR reintegration
effort. The U.N. refugee agency is providing building materials to
assist the returnees in reconstructing damaged homes. Drinking water
is also lacking in many areas because of the long drought, and in some
cases relief workers are helping to drill wells, Lubbers said.
Another important priority, Lubber said, is to help boost the capacity
of the Afghan people to help themselves. He said that's why the agency
is delivering materials and support for reconstruction, urging
refugees to rebuild their own homes. That's also why UNHCR has been
cautious in handing out cash.
"We are not in the business of handing over money; that's too risky,"
Lubbers said. He said UNHCR relief workers have been careful in
screening applicants for travel grants, and he's convinced that action
has helped in preventing fraud and abuse of those funds.
All of this activity in Afghanistan is costing $20 million a month,
and Lubbers anticipates that a funding shortfall of as much as $150
million could stymie UNHCR efforts later this year unless
international donors boost contributions to the effort.
That's a common problem among the relief agencies. The International
Organization for Migration (IOM) announced May 7 that it would be
scaling back its work to return internally displaced persons (IDPs) in
Afghanistan because of funding shortfalls. IOM spokesperson
Jean-Philippe Chauzy said in a press briefing that
larger-than-expected numbers of returnees had drained the agency's
resources unexpectedly. IOM is assisting with returns of IDPs in
Herat, in western Afghanistan, and was hit with "vastly inflated
transport costs" when a transportation cartel boosted the cost of
truck rentals 17 times beyond market rates.
So while the aid agencies look to donors to sustain funding for a
relief effort in Afghanistan, Leader said the international community
also needs to be concerned about how prolonged the activity becomes.
It's appropriate that UNHCR take an active role in the reintegration
process underway, she said, but not for more than a year. At that
point, reintegration will be ending, and reconstruction should be
under way. She said agencies such as the World Bank and the U.N.
Development Agency need to take the leading roles in that process.
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)
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