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UNHCR: More than 2.5m Afghans have returned home

IRNA

Tehran, Oct 29, IRNA -- The United Nations refugee agency announced 
Tuesday that more than 2.5 million Afghans have returned to their 
homeland since a repatriation program began in March last year, said a
press release issued by the United Nations Information Center here on 
Wednesday. 
At a press briefing in Geneva, a spokesman for the UN High 
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the number of people returning 
from Iran has just passed 600,000. The agency said the number 
returning from Pakistan topped 1.9 million Tuesday. 
Spokesman Kris Janowski said most refugees returned to central and
northern Afghanistan, but that about a quarter of them remained in the
country`s west, which borders Iran. 
UNHCR estimates about 1.1 million refugees remain in camps inside 
Pakistan, and another one million live in Iran. 
UNHCR`s representative in Pakistan, Hasim Utkan, described the 
current period as `especially rewarding` given the volume of refugees 
who left Afghanistan for Pakistan since 1979. "This has been a 
tremendously exciting time to be here," he said. 
The pace of returning refugees has slowed down, as UNHCR expected,
with the imminent arrival of winter in Afghanistan. The agency 
supplies returning refugees with transport, a travel grant, food, 
relief items and the opportunity to take part in a shelter program. 
UNHCR organized the repatriation scheme in concert with the 
Governments of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, and it ends in 2005. 
/AH/210 
End