NEW YORK - Human Rights Watch (HRW), a prominent international watchdog body, has urged the Pakistani government to extend Afghan refugees’ legal residency status until at least December 31, 2017.
On January 12, 2016, it noted that the government extended registered Afghan refugees’ Proof of Residency (PoR) cards until June 30, 2016.
“Pakistan’s six-month residency extension reduces Afghan refugees’ insecurity, but the government also needs to stop police abuse of the refugees,” Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on Saturday. “A two-year extension both sends the message that refugees shouldn’t be pressured to go home and would give officials time to work out resettlement to third countries and other longer-term solutions.”
The temporary extension of the PoR cards, which officially recognise their holders’ status as “Afghan citizen[s] temporarily residing in Pakistan,” is a relief to the country’s 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees whose existing PoR cards had expired on December 31, 2015, HRW said. However, it said, the six-month extension falls far short of the end-2017 date recommended by the Ministry for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON). The extension also fails to address the insecurity among refugees over the duration of that status and uncertainty regarding protection should the government end PoR status, it added.
“That insecurity is exacerbated by implicit and explicit threats by Pakistani officials over the past year, saying that after the expiration of their PoR cards, their holders become ‘illegal aliens and have no right to stay [in Pakistan]’.”
Pakistan is host to one of the largest displaced populations in the world. The 2.5 million Afghan refugees, which according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) include an estimated 1 million undocumented Afghans living in Pakistan as of November 2015, consist of many who fled conflict and repression in Afghanistan during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and their descendants. Some arrived as children, grew up in Pakistan, married, and had children of their own who have never lived in Afghanistan. Others have arrived in the decades of turmoil in Afghanistan since, seeking security, employment, and a higher standard of living.
Afghans in Pakistan have experienced a sharp increase in hostility since the so-called Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, killing 145 people, including 132 children, HRW said.
“Pakistan could reduce police abuses by extending residency cards for Afghan refugees,” Kine said. “This would also provide the government space to develop a long-term, rights-respecting solution for the Afghan refugees.”