Abstract:

Over the past few decades, Pakistan has remained home to Afghan refugees due to the protracted wars caused either by the Superpowers’ military interventions or internal conflicts. Even though Pakistan Pakistan’s has generously Afghanistan has been host to a protracted conflict and political instability since the last three decades. Pakistan, owing to the increasing political turmoil, economic burden and poor law and order situation warrant the return of huge bulk of refugees. The present research has identified the factors or constraints in the orderly repatriation of Afghan refugees both in home and host country. This research has utilized semi-structured interview guide to collect primary data. The qualitative research and relevant data was collected in the three cities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa namely; Abbottabad, Mingora, and Peshawar from Afghan Refugees and host community. Thus, 45 respondents were interviewed in these three cities based on snowball sampling technique including five officials of Commissionerate for Afghan. The responses of the Afghan Refugees revealed that majority of refugees were reluctant to return to their country of origin due to the prevailing insecurity and deteriorating socio-economic conditions. It is derived from the analysis of the data that the creation of employment opportunities, provision of basic health and education and the provision of skill development opportunities in Afghanistan can be the major factors to attract the refugees back to Afghanistan. It shows that the absence of these socio-economic opportunities in the home country has significantly affected the repatriation process of Afghan refugees from Pakistan. Moreover, it was found that most refugees urged the government of Pakistan to cease the forceful return of Afghans until the socio-economic conditions in Afghanistan comes to normalcy. Furthermore, for repatriation to be successful, the government of Afghanistan, Pakistan as well as the UNHCR should come up with a holistic strategy to facilitate the dignified return of Afghan refugees to their home country.

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