Non-governmental organization says 250,000 Afghan children need education, food and shelter after being forcibly repatriated from Pakistan
ISLAMABAD — A quarter of a million Afghan children forcibly returned from Pakistan are in need of education, food and shelter, a non-governmental organization said Thursday.
Pakistan is cracking down on foreigners believed to be in the country illegally, including 1.7 million Afghans. The group claims the campaign is not specifically directed against Afghans, who make up the majority of foreigners in the country.
More than 520,000 Afghans have left Pakistan since October last year.
Save the Children said families were entering Afghanistan with “virtually nothing” and that almost half of those returning were children.
According to a survey of families conducted by an NGO, almost all of them said they did not have enough food for the next one to two months. Some returnees and host families have had to borrow money or rely on friends and relatives for food.
According to Save the Children, nearly two-thirds of children returned to Afghanistan are not attending school. The majority told the group that they did not have the necessary documents to register and enroll in the school. In Pakistan, more than two-thirds of these children were attending school.
A further obstacle faced by returnees is the ban on girls attending school beyond the sixth grade in Afghanistan.
Arshad Malik, Save the Children's Country Director for Afghanistan, said the return of so many people was putting further strain on already stretched resources.
“Many illegal Afghan children are born in Pakistan,” he said. “Afghanistan is not a place they call home. In addition to returns from Pakistan, 600,000 Afghans arrived from Iran last year.”
Refugee Ministry spokesman Abdul Mutalib Haqqani said children who missed classes would be provided with education.
“Students can enroll in any class and continue their studies, whether they have documents or not,” Haqqani said. “We solved this problem.”
Pakistan's decision to deport Afghans who entered the country illegally was a major blow. Many Afghans have lived in Pakistan for decades, having been forced to flee the country due to the country's spate of wars.
After the order was announced, hundreds of thousands of people fled back to Afghanistan for fear of arrest.
