Pakistan — Quarterly Flow Monitoring of Undocumented Afghan Returnees from Pakistan (April- June 2023)

IOM Pakistan collects data on the outflows of undocumented Afghan nationals at the Torkham and Chaman border crossing points in an effort to better understand the migration movements of undocumented Afghan nationals returning to Afghanistan from Pakistan. Key findings during this reporting period are:

• Between April and June 2023, 24,822 undocumented Afghan nationals spontaneously returned to Afghanistan, including 11,397 through the Torkham border point and 13,425 through the Chaman border point. Border authorities facilitated the return of 1,229 individuals due to the lack of legal documentation to remain in Pakistan. Therefore, information concerning these 1,229 individuals is not included in the count.

• Although IOM identified 24,822 undocumented Afghan returnees at two border crossings, this may not reflect the total number of undocumented Afghan returnees. Moreover, for this study, only the head of household or representative of the family were interviewed. This means that the number of interviews conducted by the enumerators is lower than the number of returnees recorded by IOM. Between April and June 2023, IOM interviewed 1,134 respondents.

• The average family size of returnees was six individuals and five per cent of all returnees recorded during the reporting period were categorized as vulnerable persons.

• The top three challenges returnees expected to face in Afghanistan were: arranging livelihoods, settling into a new city and finding better income opportunities.

• All returnees were carrying household items when surveyed. They also travelled with additional items, such as personal belongings (99%), cash (97%), productive assets (88%), transportation vehicles (3%) and livestock (1%).