Afghan refugee women buy bangles at a roadside stall in the Pakistani city Peshawar. AFP
Afghan refugee women buy bangles at a roadside stall in the Pakistani city Peshawar. AFP

Pakistan PM Imran Khan offers citizenship to Afghan refugees



Afghan refugees born in Pakistan will be offered citizenship, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday in a dramatic change of policy that could benefit of hundreds of thousands of marginalised people.

The move would also extend to Bangladeshi refugees, Mr Khan said.

Pakistani law already offers citizenship to anyone born in the country but this has not been applied either group, leaving them without identification documents needed for essential services and vulnerable to harassment.

The United Nations says there are about 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan who have fled war and persecution over four decades, making it the largest refugee population in the world. A large proportion were born there.

Pakistan also holds an estimated 200,000 ethnic Bangladeshis, many of them stranded since Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Analysts expressed surprise at Mr Khan's proposal, questioning whether it was a ploy to appeal to voters from the cross-border Pashtun ethnic group, and whether it was politically possible for him to implement. There was no immediate response from the Afghan government, which has in the past called on its refugees to return and rebuild their country.

Mr Khan made the announcement during a visit to the port city of Karachi, which has a large Afghan population and has also been plagued by gang violence.

He said failing to give refugees citizenship or documents deprived them of work and was forcing them into crime and the black market.

“Afghans whose children have been raised and born in Pakistan will be granted citizenship, God willing, because this is the established practice in countries around the world," Mr Khan said.

"You get an American passport if you are born in America. Then why can't we do it here. We continue to subject these people to unfair treatment.”

He went on: “They are humans. How come we have deprived them and have not arranged for offering them national identification card and passport for 30 years, 40 years."

Millions of Afghans fled to Pakistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion and the years of civil war and Taliban rule that followed. While many returned after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, the resurgence of the militant insurgency has generated a new wave of Afghans fleeing violence.

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The fate of the refugees is a long-running source of tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Islamabad believes it has borne the burden of millions of its neighbours for long enough and has repeatedly threatened mass repatriations.

During a visit to Kabul at the weekend, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said his country had shown “unmatched hospitality” and called for “dignified and sustainable repatriation”.

Giving the refugees citizenship would entitle them to Pakistan's computerised national identification card (CNIC), without which they have been cut off from basic services, including enrolment at state schools, banking and renting or buying property. They have also faced police and bureaucratic harassment, and are often accused of harbouring or encouraging militants and posing a security risk.

“It's quite a change on the face of it, it's remarkable. Without a CNIC they are deprived of a great many benefits,” said Saroop Ijaz of Human Rights Watch.

Although Pakistani law already allows anyone born in the country to gain citizenship, unless they are the child of a foreign diplomat or an "enemy alien", this "certainly hasn't been applied to Afghan refugees or Afghan nationals as far as I'm aware", an international official working with refugees told The National.

“This is potentially a game changer for a huge number of people, but we have to see what happens now."

The UN's refugee agency welcomed Mr Khan's announcement. "We look forward to working closely with the government of Pakistan on this issue in the coming weeks,” said Dan McNorton, spokesman for the agency in Islamabad.

Mr Khan used his first speech after his election in July to say he wanted an EU-style open border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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One in nine do not have enough to eat

Created in 1961, the World Food Programme is pledged to fight hunger worldwide as well as providing emergency food assistance in a crisis.

One of the organisation’s goals is the Zero Hunger Pledge, adopted by the international community in 2015 as one of the 17 Sustainable Goals for Sustainable Development, to end world hunger by 2030.

The WFP, a branch of the United Nations, is funded by voluntary donations from governments, businesses and private donations.

Almost two thirds of its operations currently take place in conflict zones, where it is calculated that people are more than three times likely to suffer from malnutrition than in peaceful countries.

It is currently estimated that one in nine people globally do not have enough to eat.

On any one day, the WFP estimates that it has 5,000 lorries, 20 ships and 70 aircraft on the move.

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It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 

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Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
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Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
 
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
 
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
The biog

Name: Samar Frost

Born: Abu Dhabi

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Favourite singer: Adele

Emergency

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Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry 

Rating: 2/5

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Paatal Lok season two

Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy 

Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong

Rating: 4.5/5