The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) will close down 12 new refugee camps in the last week of this month, which were set up after the tragic event of September 11, 2001.
"We are closing down 12 new camps by the end of August which were opened after September 11," UNHCR Spokesman Asif Shahzad said, while talking to Business Recorder here on Friday.
The UN Refugee Agency had established these camps in the tribal belts of NWFP and Balochistan, after US-led coalition forces ousted Taleban in late 2001.
Asif said that six out of 12 of these new camps are in Balochistan, hosting a population of around 120,000 refugees and the other six in NWFP with a population of 65,000 refugees.
He said that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has announced an enhanced package for Afghan refugees repatriating from these camps.
To a question, he said that there are still 1.8 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. "We have data of around 1.1 million refugees who are residing in camps, while nearly 0.7 million people are living in urban areas of Pakistan," he added.
To another question, he said that the repatriation process of Afghans would be completed in 2006.
Asif was hopeful that around 400,000 refugees would return this year and if the present pace of repatriation continues, the figure would cross the number of 500,000.
Around 253,409 Afghan refugees have been repatriated since March 2004 with the UNHCR's assistance. In all 143,882 refugees have been repatriated from NWFP, 50,873 from Balochistan, 31,155 from Sindh and 27,499 from Punjab and Islamabad.
More than 2.1 million refugees have been repatriated to Afghanistan from Pakistan since the UNHCR started its repatriation in 2002.