It was our destiny. The two relatives turned back, but he continued with his son. As a result, the number of asylum applications in Europe fell to around half a million annually. A 21-year-old sleeps in the back of a butcher shop in Kabul, Afghanistan after being returned from Europe. According to the UN, attacks on schools in Afghanistan tripled after 2017, nearly half of them taking place in Nangarhar province. Arezao Naiby, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, photographed at her workplace in Cologne, Germany [Oscar Durand/Al Jazeera]Her father and brother went out one day and did not return. © REUTERS. Every Sunday, Hamdi Mohseni, his wife Serda, and their five remaining children, walk the 15km from their apartment to the paupers’ cemetery where their daughter Zahra is buried. At least 54 migrants died in June when the boat they were in sank as they attempted to avoid checkpoints along the roads in eastern Turkey by crossing Lake Van, near the Iranian border. “The fighting was especially bad in Mazar-i-Sharif. Schools were hit especially hard, becoming the target of attacks by ISIL. UNHCR is monitoring developments in Turkey … There are also Afghan refugees in Turkey and in Europe, where they make up the second largest refugee population after the Syrians. Before leaving Afghanistan, Naiby’s mother worked as the top official overseeing women’s prisons in Kabul. Afghan Refugees Fighting COVID-19. Afghan refugees, Turkey Although violence between NATO forces and the Taliban has decreased substantially over the past few years, thousands of Afghan refugees continue to reside in refugee camps in neighboring countries, such as Turkey, for fear of returning to hostility and violent retribution. Serda keeps the clothes her daughter wore in a plastic bag in a closet. The pressure on Afghans in Iran only intensified with the imposition of US sanctions on the country over its nuclear programme in 2018. How I photographed the start of Tunisia’s Arab Spring, In wake of election loss, Trump’s enemies list keeps expanding, Trump downplays massive cyberattack on US government agencies, UK imposes tighter curbs amid confirmation of new COVID strain, Stuck in Guantanamo for 12 years, Afghan inmate’s health at risk, Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights. Turkey is home to almost 3.6 million Syrian refugees and close to 330,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers of other nationalities, including Afghans and Pakistanis, according to the UNHCR. 10 Jun 2020 “Syria, before the war, unless you were politically involved in opposition groups, you had a stable life, and that has not been the case for Afghanistan,” Stoyer says. … And German authorities floated the idea of following a trend in other European countries of prosecuting refugee rights activists for simple actions like publicising the time and location of a deportation flight. So Muhammad and his family remained in Pakistan, among the 2.5 million Afghans there, half of whom are not registered with Pakistani authorities and all of whom are made increasingly unwelcome by the country’s laws. Refworld contains a vast collection of reports relating to situations in countries of origin, policy documents and positions, and documents relating to international and national legal frameworks. The Islamic Republics of Iran and Pakistan jointly host 91 per cent — some 2.4 million — of Afghan refugees worldwide. Turkey hosts refugees from many countries. Staying close to their country is not as possible as it once was for Afghans. Germany followed up by officially declaring there were “internal protection alternatives,” in Afghanistan – that Afghan cities like Kabul were safe to deport most Afghans to. Soyer is managing director of the Munich Counseling and Treatment Centre for Refugees and Torture Victims, where hundreds of Afghans are referred each year for treatment. It didn’t happen. Since 2014, Turkey has been the country hosting the largest number of refugees under UNHCR’s mandate in the world – with the vast majority being nationals of the Syrian Arab Republic. Iranian police stopped them and asked for their documents. Even well-documented and publicly known asylum cases of Afghans fleeing the Taliban – like that of the Naiby family – now faced rejection. Relocating to another part of Afghanistan offered no guarantee of work or safety or the promise of medical treatment for Faisa, so the family decided to leave the country and try to reach Europe. Following a recent change in asylum procedures for Afghans and other non-Syrians in Turkey, Afghans have been facing increasing difficulties in registering with the authorities. Zakira Hekmat too confirms these arbitrary actions. "Expanding safe and legal pathways to protection, including through resettlement, saves refugees' lives and it can also mitigate their resort to dangerous journeys by land or sea," Triggs said. Muhammad and other Afghan refugees who fled the Soviet invasion made Pakistan the world’s largest host country for refugees for more than two decades. Under the administration of the governorships, the Social Assistance and Solidarity … As of 26 June 2020, refugees of the Syrian Civil War in Turkey … Pakistan and the UN refugee agency are holding a conference to highlight the challenges facing Afghan refugees. The coronavirus pandemic has brought a temporary decline in those figures: Just 44,327 Afghans were apprehended in Turkey between January and November 2020, probably as a result of lockdowns in Turkey and Europe, as well as asylum application processing being suspended in European countries. Every month, chartered planes carry scores of Afghans who have been denied asylum in Germany back to Kabul. For an Afghan to be granted asylum, they now needed to show they, personally, were being threatened in their country. Finally, in early 2019, one night in the city of Van – “when the smuggler figured he couldn’t get any more money out of us,” Mohseni says – they were put in a minivan and told they would be taken west to the city of Tatvan, and then on to Ankara. He struggles to find an answer when asked what he misses about his native Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. “I told them we were poor, and we are only going to get medication for my child, but they detained me. “None of these things you see, even the glass you are drinking tea from, belong to me,” says Mohseni. Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Naiby recalls living in any available building, in cities like Bonn and Cologne. Most have fled the war in Afghanistan. Despite being born in Iran and speaking Farsi like a local, she says her hopes were dashed by a litany of laws meant to keep Afghans from settling down. Millions returned home after the Soviets withdrew, only to flee again during the subsequent civil war and rise of the Taliban after 1996. In 2015 and 2016, at the height of the flow, nearly half a million Afghans in total were able to apply for asylum in Europe. The government says it is responding to the surge in arrivals of non-Syrian refugees by building seven … More than 1.2 million people applied for asylum in Europe in 2015 and another 1.2 million in 2016; approximately 15 percent of those applicants were Afghans, according to the European Union. The law was eventually enacted but with penalties only for civil servants who help those scheduled for deportation. “In therapy, you need something to build on. In November 2018, a Refugees International team sat in Ali Hekmat’s office in Kayseri, Turkey, as he told us about the harsh realities Afghan refugees face living there. 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