Pakistan has accommodated some three million Afghan refugees for more than twenty years. Since the Russian invasion in 1979, waves of Afghans flooded across the border, at first to escape the fighting, but later also the dictatorial regime of the Taliban or the drought and the poor economic prospects. The last wave was in 2001, after the attacks of September 11 and the subsequent American reaction.

In Pakistan the Afghans live partly in refugee camps on the border, and partly in the cities. Most have been living there for over fifteen years. Almost half of them were born in Pakistan; these children and young people only know Afghanistan from stories their parents tell them. Since the fall of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001, the UN refugee organization UNHCR has been working on repatriation. Pakistan is urging all refugees to return and has already closed a considerable number of camps. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have indeed returned, but Pakistan is still accommodating some 2.5 million Afghans. They are not attracted by the idea of returning to the continuing violence and an inadequately functioning Afghan society.

Worldwide, an estimated thirty million people are refugees. Over a third of them have fled across the border, while the rest have sought safety in their own country. Often very little attention is paid to the latter groups. Refugees in neighbouring countries are brought together in camps under the protection of the UNHCR, and emergency aid often flows in from various other countries. However, this kind of help is not a long-term solution. Not only in Pakistan, but also in Africa and the Middle East, camps sometimes tend to acquire an almost permanent character. The refugee problem, which is linked to wars and ethnic-religious conflicts, is difficult to resolve.

The Netherlands only offers admission to refugees who fear personal persecution in their own country, according to the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention which is implemented worldwide. The threat of armed conflict is not a basic criterion for recognition as a refugee. But the Netherlands does participate in the UNHCR’s invitation only policy. This organization selects refugees in the camps who qualify for asylum in the safe West, because of traumas, for example. The Netherlands is one of the countries that accept quota refugees under this regulation and invites five hundred refugees annually, which, incidentally, is only a fraction of the stream of people spontaneously applying for asylum in the Netherlands.