New Delhi, Nov 03: The UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) has said it treats Kashmiri Pandit migrants
as `Internally Displaced Persons`, a status the community has
been demanding for long, but made it clear that the world body
has no role to play in their case.
"The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has no role with
Internally Displaced Persons in India," the world body said in
response to a memorandum submitted by a Kashmiri Pandit group
`Roots in Kashmir` (RIK).
In the memorandum, submitted during the visit of UN
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon last Friday, the Kashmiri group
appealed that the world body take cognisance of the plight of
Pandits who had to leave their homes in the valley.
The RIK said that even 19 years after the mass exodus,
over 50,000 of "Kashmiri Pandit refugees are living in
pathetic conditions in uninhabitable refugee camps" and that
the successive Central and state governments had failed in
protecting their rights.
In response, the UNHCR said its mandate is to work for
refugees and "in some countries, on invitation by sovereign
governments, with internally displaced populations".
Making a distinction between internally displaced
persons and refugees, it said it depends on whether the people
have crossed an international border.
"They (Kashmiri Pandits) may have left Kashmir for
reasons very similar to those who become refugees, but since
they have not crossed an international border, they continue
to be protected by the same national government (in this case
India) in a different part of the country (Jammu, Delhi,
Mumbai, etc)," it said.
"They have not lost the protection of the national
government," the UNHCR said, adding the world body steps in
when people lose the protection of their national governments,
by crossing an international border.
’276,000 Afghan refugees returned this year’
More than 276,000 Afghan refugees
have returned to their troubled homeland this year, most of
them from Pakistan, under a voluntary repatriation programme,
the UN refugee agency said today.
The programme, which has wrapped up for the year ahead
of winter, is the largest in the world with more then five
million Afghans coming home since 2002 after the fall of the
extremist Taliban regime.
"The official figure for returnees to Afghanistan this
year from Pakistan, Iran and what we call non-neighbouring
countries is 276,700," UN High Commissioner for Refugees
official Ewen McLeod told reporters.
Bureau Report
