Pakistan has begun the second phase of expelling undocumented Afghan refugees from the country on Sunday, June 30.
According to Al Jazeera, Pakistani authorities will most likely deport more than 800,000 Afghans from the country. Earlier in the first phase, in November 2023, about 541,000 Afghans were forced to leave the country.
The Pakistani government before the first deportation said that there were nearly 4.4 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, of whom around 1.73 were undocumented.
The government also explained that it is expelling Afghans due to security concerns and economic issues. Moreover, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad, Philippa Candler, told Al Jazeera that Pakistan must look at the profiles of the undocumented Afghans before expelling them, as many of them ‘need international protection.’
Candler further added, “They’re refugees. They’re not involved in terrorist activities. They’re just people who fled and who need protection.”
She also suggested that if any Afghan national is involved in the terrorism, ‘it should be dealt with separately.’
Al Jazeera correspondent Kamal Hyder, who talked to the people in Khazana refugee camp in Peshawar city, reported, “They complain that their houses are being raided in the dead of the night. They’ve been forced to leave this country in a very miserable condition. (It was) very difficult to leave after spending a lifetime in a country and then being forced out.”