The government of Pakistan and UN Refugee Agency have completed identifying the locations of Afghan households in almost all areas of the country in preparation for a formal census, it was announced on Saturday. Census teams have finished the work in many areas, like Karachi and Tribal Area of troubled South Waziristan.
UN agency has started distributing nearly 340,000 copies of an information sheet explaining the purpose and procedures for the census, which will be carried out in the second half of February.
In the poor areas of Islamabad, where many Afghans live, people eagerly took copies of the announcement and read details of the census to the people gathered around. In better-off areas, most people already knew the procedures because of television and radio news reports.
It is to mention here that the census was announced on Tuesday after a meeting in Islamabad between UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers and Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind. SAFRON deals with Afghan refugees.
Although UNHCR has been assisting Afghan refugees in Pakistan for a quarter century, there has never been a formal census or registration of all those who fled the fighting in their homeland.
This will provide UNHCR and the government with the first details on their numbers and background, helping in the development of programmes for dealing with Afghans, who remain after the expiry in March 2006 of the agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and UNHCR on the voluntary repatriation of Afghans.
UNHCR and the Pakistan government agree that voluntary repatriation of Afghan citizens is the preferred goal. In the past three years UNHCR has assisted nearly 2.3 million Afghans to return from Pakistan and anticipates a further 400,000 will repatriate during 2005. However, there are likely to be many Afghans still here after the current agreement ends.
The government has estimated there are some 3.2 million Afghans - refugees and others - in Pakistan, while UNHCR says there are about a million Afghans in camps and an unknown number in Pakistani cities.
The census will include all Afghans, who arrived in Pakistan since the beginning of December 1979, the year of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. All Afghans must participate and only those included in the census will be eligible to take part in a proposed registration later in the year that could provide some sort of document.
The census will be carried out over a period of approximately 10 days by teams, each with a man and a woman, who will conduct interviews with all families in their homes. Census official will record the gender, ethnicity, address and source of livelihood for all Afghans.