UN agency works to help refugees stranded on Afghan-Pakistani border4 July – The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has relocated over 3,500 Afghans to new sites inside Pakistan and Afghanistan during the first five days of an effort to clear a makeshift camp where thousands of asylum-seekers had been stranded for over a year.
UNHCR and the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed last May on a plan to empty the squalid "waiting area" just inside Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, where an estimated 20,000 Afghans had been camping for months on end without proper security or sanitation and with only limited aid. Last month, almost all residents there signed up to move out.
The makeshift camp was first created by Afghan asylum-seekers when Pakistan closed its borders to new refugee arrivals in February 2002. However, UNHCR always considered the site, located along a smuggling route, unsuitable for a refugee camp. Last month, bodies of 22 fighters killed nearby in a battle with Afghan government troops were dumped in the centre of the refugee settlement in a grim reminder of the area's fragile security.
In addition, Pakistani authorities, anxious to prevent the area from becoming a permanent village, would not let aid workers provide more than basic humanitarian relief such as food and water. Aside from a few UNHCR tarpaulins distributed to emergency cases a year ago, the refugees lived under ragged home-made tents.
The UNHCR convoys will continue until all those requesting to move to the alternative sites have been relocated. But the agency has warned residents that once the move is completed, it will no longer assist those remaining in the "waiting area."
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