in 2008, more than 282,000 registered Afghans returned home with UNHCR assistance

The majority of returnees remained from NWFP 80.6 %, while 7.8 % from Balochistan, 7.5 % from Punjab, 3.3 from Sind and 0.8 from Islamabad returned.

Out of the total, 56.8% Afghans opted for returns were the off camp population while the remaining 43.2% were in camp population.

90% of total returnee were ethnic Pashtuns, 6% Tajik and rest other ethnicities i.e. Hazara, Turkmen, Uzbak and Baloch.

Registration project of the Afghan in Pakistan that started in end 2006 was concluded during the first quarter of 2007 that registered 2.19 million Afghans in Pakistan.

Repatriation in 2007 was conducted in two phases with the ‘grace period’ of six weeks for Afghans who did not register with NADRA and the second phase the regular repatriation of registered Afghans.

Over 206,000 non registered Afghans returned during the grace period started from March to till mid April

During the second phase started from mid April to end October, some 159,535 registered Afghan opted to return home with UNHCR assistance.

NWFP toped the return list with repatriating 80.1 % refugees followed by Balochistan from where 12.7 % out of the total returned. From Sind3.0%, Punjab 3.9 and Islamabad 0.1 % Afghan returned in 2007.

The overall return data of the year indicates 71.8 percent Afghans heading back home from Pakistan were from the urban settlements and 28.2 % from refugee villages.