Pakistan extends visas for 1.45 million Afghans, but deportations on hold

CNN
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Pakistani authorities have extended the stay of some 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees but said mass deportations of “illegal migrants” would continue.

Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif’s office announced on Wednesday that Afghan refugees holding Proof of Registration (POR) cards will be allowed to stay in the country until June 30, 2025.

The fate of 1.45 million refugees whose PORs expired at the end of June had been unclear, with many fearing they would be forcibly returned.

The news of the extension comes a day after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees visited Afghanistan and requested Pakistan to extend its POR cards.

“I am happy that Pakistan’s tradition of hospitality is being maintained,” Filippo Grandi wrote on X on Thursday.

But Pakistan’s foreign ministry disputed the UN’s claim that Islamabad had put on hold plans announced last October to forcibly repatriate undocumented Afghan refugees.

“(The plan to deport illegal foreigners) remains in place and is being carried out in an orderly and gradual manner,” spokesman Mumtaz Baloch told CNN on Thursday.

Pakistan is home to one of the world’s largest refugee populations, most of whom are from Afghanistan, but the country has not always been welcoming to Afghan refugees, for many years subjecting them to poor living conditions and the threat of deportation.

According to UNHCR data, as of March 2024, more than three million Afghan refugees, including registered refugees, and more than 800,000 illegal immigrants were living in Pakistan.

Some Afghans fled their home country decades ago during the Soviet invasion, while others took refuge in Pakistan when the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan in 2021 and began their oppressive rule.

Pakistan in October last year gave illegal Afghans several weeks to leave the country or face deportation, and claimed that Afghan nationals were responsible for 14 of Pakistan’s 24 major terrorist attacks last year. According to the UNHCR, about 650,000 Afghans returned home between Sept. 15 and the end of June 2023. Of those, about 32,000 were forcibly returned.

They are returning to countries under the control of extremist regimes that enforce a form of gender segregation and leave millions impoverished.

A UN report released on Tuesday detailed human rights abuses by the Taliban’s so-called morality police, who disproportionately target women and girls, creating an “atmosphere of fear and intimidation” in Afghanistan.

Moniza Kakar, a lawyer who helps Afghan migrants understand Pakistan’s legal system, said the POR card extension would not bring stability to all refugees.

“The Afghan communities I’ve spoken to remain concerned because there are many families where the man has a POR card but his wife and children don’t have documents,” Kakar told CNN.

“There remains a great deal of fear that these paperwork issues will tear families apart.”

Tyagi Ruwanpathirana, South Asia regional researcher at Amnesty International, said rights groups have “documented significant delays and obstacles refugees face in obtaining POR cards.”

Ruwanpathirana added that the status of 80,000 Afghan citizen card holders, another means of registration for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, was also uncertain.

“We call on the Pakistani government to formally halt its ‘Illegal Alien Repatriation Programme’, halt all deportations, and put in place a domestic legal framework regulating the acquisition of refugee status in line with international refugee law,” she said.

This story has been updated with additional information.