Pakistan's Imran Khan pledges citizenship for 1.5m Afghan refugees

Imran Khan has pledged to grant nationality to 1.5 million Afghan refugee who have lived on the margins of Pakistan’s society for decades.

According to the UN, Pakistan has the principal refugee population in the world, regularly made up of 2.7 million refugee from Afghanistan. Many fled the Soviet invasion in 1979, while others came across the edging due to violence and economic turmoil.

In a revelation announcement on Sunday at a civic event in Karachi, the Pakistani prime minister said: “Afghans whose children have been raise and born in Pakistan will be settled citizenship inshallah (God willing) because this is the established practice in countries around the world.

“They are human. How come we have destitute them and have not set for offering them national identification card and passport for 30 years, 40 years?”t

According to UN surveys, about 60% of the Afghan refugee people was born in Pakistan, gist almost 1.5 million people stand to benefit. Khan also promise the same treatment for Bengali refugees, which would include the Rohingya minority.

Pakistan’s citizenship act of 1951 guarantees nationality to anyone born in the country.

However, bureaucratic hurdles, ethnic rivalries and the exception against children whose parents come from “alien” or rival nations has made it close to impossible for Afghan and Bengali refugees to secure their rights, along with the Pakistani passport they would bring.

Khan noted in his speech, put out on national television, that a lack of official citations pushed many refugees towards black-market labour or crime.

Human rights groups and commentator across the political spectrum welcomed the announcement as the first real sign of Khan’s promise to tremble up the status quo and bring in a new, progressive Pakistan.

He swept to victory in elections in July as the candidate for the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

The pledge marks a reversal of decades of hostility towards Afghan refugees in particular, who are often blamed for producing or shielding terrorists.

 The official government policy has long been to endorse “voluntary” repatriation. In 2016, about 600,000 Afghans were sent back, in a process criticised as rude by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

question were being asked in Pakistan about whether Khan had cleared his proposal with the powerful military, which has traditionally held swing over refugee policy.

The day before the prime minister’s speech, the foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who is seen as close to the army, returned from a visit to Kabul stressing the need for “dignified, sustainable repatriation”.

source within the UN were pleased at the initiative, but spoken some scepticism as to how fully it would be carried out.

Some analysts posited a following incentive for Khan. Afghan refugees belong to the Pashtun ethnicity and Pashtuns, thousands of whom live in Karachi, overpoweringly “voted for PTI” two months ago, said Saroop Ijaz of HRW. Offering more Pashtuns citizenship could cement the party’s hold on the crucial megalopolis, he added.

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