Pakistan’s Ministry of State and Frontier Regions has announced plans to deport roughly 1.3 million Afghans starting in September.
The ministry’s spokesperson said, “These are the people whose UN-issued registration cards expired at the end of June and were not renewed by the government.” He noted that Pakistan had extended the grace period for Afghan refugees until the middle of this month.
After that date, anyone who remains in the country will be arrested and deported.
The Pakistani government has informed the provinces that the deportation of roughly 1.3 million Afghan refugees holding registration cards will begin on September 1. This comes after the Foreign Ministry announced a few days ago that the final category of permanent residence cards will expire on June 30, 2025, meaning that Afghan refugees holding those cards are now considered illegal residents.
The Pakistani Ministry of Interior also sent its deportation plan for undocumented refugees to the police chiefs of the country’s four provinces. According to the letter, the federal government has decided to begin the voluntary return of holders of the final category of permanent residence cards, with the deportation process set to start on September 1, 2025.
The letter also stated that Afghan citizen card holders will continue to be covered under the Afghan resettlement program.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) expressed deep concern over the large-scale deportations of Afghan refugees and issued a statement over reports it had received of arrests and expulsions of Afghan refugees legally registered in Pakistan.
The statement read: “UNHCR calls on the government to halt forced returns and adopt a humanitarian approach to ensure the voluntary, gradual, and dignified return of Afghans.”
According to Reuters, a spokesperson for the UNHCR said that the Pakistani authorities had arrested hundreds of legally registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan and forcibly deported hundreds to Afghanistan during the first days of this August.
Pursuant to the Pakistani government, the authorities carried out mass deportations of unregistered refugees in November 2023, and the government plans to deport nearly three million Afghans in the long term. The government began deporting registered refugees at the beginning of this year, and the number deported so far has exceeded one million.
