Pakistan to begin second phase of Afghan deportations | Refugee News

More than 800,000 Afghans are likely to be expelled in the second phase of the controversial plan.

Pakistan is set to begin the second phase of a controversial plan to send undocumented Afghan refugees back to their country.

Starting Sunday, authorities are expected to expel more than 800,000 Afghans from the country, after around 541,000 were forced to leave in the first phase in November last year.

If they do not leave voluntarily, refugees may be arrested and deported.

Before the first phase of repatriation, the Pakistani government claimed that there were around 4.4 million Afghan refugees, of which around 1.73 million were undocumented.

The government defended the crackdown, citing security concerns and a struggling economy.

The deportation order came amid a dramatic increase in armed attacks across Pakistan, with the government blaming the attacks on Afghanistan-based groups and citizens, a claim the Taliban government in Afghanistan has rejected.

Philippa Candler, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad, told Al Jazeera that Pakistan should analyze the profiles of undocumented Afghans before expelling them, as many of them “need international protection”.

“They are refugees. They are not involved in terrorist activities. They are just people who fled and need protection,” Candler said, adding that if any Afghan citizen was involved in terrorist activities, “the matter should be dealt with separately.”

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from the Khazana refugee camp in the city of Peshawar, which is home to about 1,300 Afghan families, said refugees had begged the international community and the Pakistani government to give them more time “so they can leave in a dignified manner.” .

“They complain that their homes are being invaded in the dead of night. They were forced to leave this country in a very miserable condition,” Hyder said, adding that it was “very difficult to leave after spending your whole life in one country and then being forced to leave.”

Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 UN convention that protects the rights of refugees. The country also lacks national laws to protect refugees, as well as procedures to determine the status of individuals seeking international protection within its borders.

Human rights group Amnesty International has warned of the risk of persecution for refugees returning to Afghanistan.