Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Internally displaced persons (IDPs) belonging to the areas of North and South Waziristan, Khyber, Orakzai and Kurram will return to their homes by November 2016.

Sources close to the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions said the government was making all-out efforts for safe return of the persons who were displaced as a result of militancy in the mentioned areas.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in his televised address had announced a 20-point Nation Action Plan after the Army Public School massacre in Peshawar on December 16, 2014.

The 20-point action plan, which remains to this day an issue of debate, stresses repatriation of IDPs, as well as administrative and development in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

In a separate development, over 37,273 registered Afghans have returned to Afghanistan so far this year from January 1 to August 9 through the voluntary repatriation centres of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

An official told APP that some 26,854 Afghan refugees repatriated from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 3,729 from Balochistan, 1,096 from Sindh, 4,926 from Punjab, 577 from Islamabad and 91 from Azad Jammu Kashmir.

With the weather improving and the increase in cash grant from $200 to $400 per person the number of returning families is slightly increasing, he added.

To a question, he said that in the first nine day of August some 17,017 registered Afghan refugees returned through UNHCR’s assistance from Pakistan (this include refugees from KP, Balochistan, Sindh, Azad Kashmir, Punjab and Islamabad).

The UNHCR facilitates the voluntary return of registered Afghan refugees from Pakistan under its facilitated voluntary repatriation programme which is ongoing since 2002.

From its start until this date more than 3.9 million Afghan refugees have returned from Pakistan, the official said.