Scale of Afghans returning from Iran is overwhelming, says UN official

Islamabad: The pace and scale of Afghans returning from Iran are overwhelming already fragile support systems, a senior UN official warned Tuesday, with tens of thousands of people crossing the border daily exhausted and traumatised, relying on humanitarian aid.

So far this year, more than 1.4 million people have returned or been forced to return to Afghanistan, including over 1 million from Iran.

Iran and Pakistan in 2023 launched separate campaigns to expel foreigners they said were living in the country illegally. They set deadlines and threatened them with deportation if they didn’t leave.

The two governments deny targeting Afghans, who have fled their homeland over the decades to escape war, poverty or Taliban rule. The UN special representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, called for immediate international support for Afghanistan following a visit to the Islam Qala border crossing in western Herat province near Iran.

The “sheer volume of returns — many abrupt, many involuntary,” should be setting off alarm bells across the global community, Otunbayeva said.

“Without swift interventions, remittance losses, labour market pressures and cyclical migration will lead to devastating consequences such as the further destabilization of both returnee and host populations, renewed displacement, mass onward movement, and risks to regional stability,” she said.

Returns from Iran peaked in June following a 20 March government deadline requiring all “undocumented” Afghans to leave.

The UN migration agency recorded more than 28,000 people crossing back into Afghanistan on June 25.

Most Afghans depend on humanitarian assistance to survive. But deep funding cuts are worsening the situation, with aid agencies and nongovernmental organisations forced to cut education and health care programmes.

Nicole van Batenburg, from the International Federation of the Red Cross, said Afghan children returning from Iran are developing

scabies, fever and other illnesses because of deteriorating conditions at the border and the hot weather. Her colleagues were reuniting hundreds of children daily who got separated from

their parents.