55,000 Afghan refugees have returned home since beginning of 2015

Since the beginning of the year, over 55,000 Afghan refugees have returned to Afghanistan, more than twice as much as in the whole of 2014, The Telegraph reported.

The rate of spontaneous returns of undocumented Afghans has increased from an average of 59 a day in 2014 to 651 in 2015.

“The Pakistani police came to our house and told us to leave,” Hoji Karim, an Afghan refugee tells of his ordeal. “They threw all our things onto the street.”

Karim and his family abandoned their home in Azad Kashmir and went to Afghanistan where they live in tents with 15 other families – a makeshift settlement by the road that runs from Torkham to Jalalabad.

The family’s home province of Patkia is too dangerous for them to return.

Back home:

Only about 4,000 of those are from among the 1.6 million documented Afghan refugees in Pakistan. These lucky few are redirected to the UNHCR centre near Jalalabad, where they receive a repatriation grant of $200 each, mine awareness education, and medical attention.

Those without documents are registered and referred to the transit centre of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) near the border when they enter Afghanistan. Due to limited resources, however, the IOM can only provide approximately 10% of the most vulnerable population with basic humanitarian assistance.

An IOM official said that many unregistered Afghan returnees reported that they had left Pakistan to escape harassment following the Peshawar attack.

Every day, more than 30,000 people cross the Torkham border.

“Pakistani officials should not be scapegoating Afghans because of the Taliban’s atrocities in Peshawar,” Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phelim Kine says. “It is inhumane, not to mention unlawful, to return Afghans to places they may face harm and not protect them from harassment and abuse.”