Dina Mahmoud (London)
As international efforts to support millions of Afghan refugees and their hosts in neighboring countries continue to falter, observers of the Afghan refugee crisis, which has been ongoing for more than four decades, have warned that it has become more complex recently, after many of those afflicted were forced to return to their homes. Challenges from the start.
Over the past few months, countries neighboring Afghanistan, including Pakistan, have deported more than 1.7 million Afghan refugees who were residing on their lands, and returned them to their homeland, which is still prey to one of the largest humanitarian crises in the entire world, with more than half of them in need. Residents there need relief aid, and the public services system collapses.
The suffering of these refugees was increased, according to experts, by the fact that their return to their country coincided with the advent of the winter season, which was characterized by extreme cold during the past two years, especially in remote areas, in parallel with the continuing decline in the volume of international humanitarian aid arriving there, and to Afghanistan in general.
Despite the relative calm witnessed in the Afghan arena on the security front, the deteriorating economic situation and the increasing unemployment rates continue to increase the difficulties faced by the returning refugees, despite their large number, including the reduction of employment opportunities available to them, and the exacerbation of existing tensions between them and job seekers from the indigenous communities in which they live. They returned to live there.
Experts pointed out that the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, in turn, complicates efforts to reintegrate refugees into their cities and villages, which already suffer from a scarcity of basic resources, such as food and water, which makes many families there struggle to secure their necessary needs, amid widespread hunger. Malnutrition is widespread.
According to those who follow Afghan affairs, the expulsion of this large number of Afghans from their host countries within a few months led to the re-presentation of the issue of their suffering on the table of various international meetings, especially since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is still classifying refugees coming from Afghanistan as They are among the largest refugee groups in the world.
According to official data published by the Afghan news network Tolo News on its website, the total number of those who left Afghanistan over the past decades and obtained asylum in other countries is estimated at eight million people, or slightly more. Government officials in Kabul say that seven million of these refugees reside in countries neighboring their country, while another million of them live in various European and Western countries.
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