Over three million Afghans returned home since 2012

The Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, Sayed Husain Alemi Balkhi, at a press conference on Monday, briefed reporters on the findings of an assessment by the ministry over the past few months by interviewing almost 64,000 individuals in 34 provinces of Afghanistan.

Balkhi said that the UN’s International Organization for Migration, or the IOM, has helped in the DTM Baseline Mobility Assessment for the period of 2012 to 2018 and that the findings are accurate and are not based on estimations. He said that the findings show that 3.225 million Afghans returned home from different countries during 2012 to 2018, while during this period, 2.291 million people left the country. Among those who left the country, 271,000 people have migrated to European countries, he said.

Balkhi said that 3.529 million people were displaced during this period. He said that from a total of 7 million displaced people and return refugees, 266,000 are living under the tent, having less access to shelter. He said that despite Due to the conflicts, insecurity the number of returnees is more than those who left the country and that it is a “positive point” and it shows that people are interested in their country.

The total number of displaced persons 3.5 million, of which, 266,000 are living under the open air, having less access to shelter. Meanwhile, Laurence Hart, the country director of IOM, said that Afghanistan is a “very mobile” population, and has been throughout history, for a number of reasons.

“The overall objective of the DTM Baseline Mobility Assessment in Afghanistan is to track mobility and displacement, provide population estimates, locations and geographic distributions of displaced, returned and migrant population as well as refugees, nomads, cross-border tribal groups and both domestic and international labor migrants,” he said. He said that based on the assessment, there is a large IDP population, and it is concentrated especially in some of the areas of Afghanistan.