PAKISTAN: Unregistered Afghans to be treated as illegal immigrants
Source: IRIN
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ISLAMABAD, 22 November (IRIN) - Afghans living in Pakistan who fail to come forward for registration under the current campaign ending on 31 December will be treated
as illegal immigrants and have to face the legal consequences, officials said on Wednesday."Those who fail to register [with Pakistani authorities], would be considered as illegal migrants and be
treated under the law of the land," Nayar Agha, head of the Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR), told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. CAR is the state body dealing with Afghan refugee
issues. In October, Islamabad started a programme to register millions of Afghan exiles living in the country, to provide them with official identification through Proof of Registration (PoR) cards,
valid for three years. The card recognises the bearer as an Afghan citizen temporarily living in Pakistan.But the take-up from the estimated 2.4 million Afghans still living in Pakistan has been
slower than expected. Many Afghans in Pakistan appear to be suspicious of the registration drive, fearing it may be a prelude to forced repatriation. UN officials and Pakistani authorities have been
trying to allay their fears. Countrywide, some 380,000 people, accounting for only about 15 percent of eligible Afghans, have registered so far, according to the office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad. The registration drive is a follow-up to a comprehensive Afghan census conducted in Pakistan in February and March 2005, which found more than 3
million Afghans were still living in the country. Since then, an estimated 580,000 Afghans have returned home, UNHCR said. A provincial breakdown suggested that about 182,000 have so far registered
in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which hosts over 1.5 million Afghan refugees mostly living in 63 UNHCR-administered camps. Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is
conducting the US $6 million exercise using fingerprints and photos to record information through 70 static and mobile registration centres across the country.Meanwhile, the slow response to Afghan
registration is expected to be on the agenda of a tripartite meeting between Islamabad, Kabul and the UN refugee agency scheduled for early December in the northeastern Pakistani city of Lahore. ts/sc/jl
