a refugee childhood


Young Afghan refugees on their way home to Afghanistan wave goodbye to Pakistan.


© UNHCR/B.Baloch


The challenge of life in their Afghan homeland for children born in exile


KABUL, Afghanistan, November 20, 2014 – Te United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted 25 years ago today to protect children like Hasanat and Aisha.


Te two have returned to a homeland, Afghanistan, that they had heard much about but never visited. Half of Afghanistan’s five million returnees since 2002 were born in exile, mostly in Iran or Pakistan, which together still shelter 2.5 million Afghans.


What returnee children make of their lives will, to a large extent, determine the long-term success of the world’s largest voluntary repatriation and reintegration program and shape Afghanistan’s potential to build a peaceful and stable future.


Hasanat


“Afghanistan is now my home. I am happy and I will never leave,” declared eight- year-old Hasanat, whose


extraordinary


return journey from Pakistan began when he decided to repatriate on his own after hearing that his father in Afghanistan had fallen ill and his refugee mother refused to return.


“I was selling fruit in the market in Karachi [in southern Pakistan],” he explained. “When I saw some trucks loaded with Afghans, I asked them where they were going.” Te men were returning to Afghanistan and Hasanat hopped on, desperate to see his sick father. At the Afghanistan border he went to fetch water and when he got back, the truck had gone.


Panic-stricken and traumatized, Hasanat survived the next two days by begging for food and sleeping on the streets. A kind shopkeeper noticed the sobbing child, fed him and contacted UNHCR to trace Hasanat’s family.


It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, as Hasanat was too young to give much information. Trough luck and hard work, UNHCR found his family in northern Afghanistan.


Both Hasanat’s biological and foster families were provided with cash support under UNHCR’s project for extremely vulnerable individuals.


Aisha Tirteen-year-old Aisha dreams of


becoming a doctor. Te top student enjoyed the benefits of a UNHCR- sponsored education in a Pakistan refugee village before going to Wardak province in Afghanistan. Her family fled to Kabul when they received threatening letters from the Taliban warning them to stop sending their daughter to school.


With UNHCR’s advocacy, the Ministry of Education granted permission for Aisha and thousands of other returnee and internally displaced children to enrol in Kabul schools.


Troughout Afghanistan, Taliban attacks have destroyed hundreds of schools, one of the prime reasons why refugee families are hesitant to repatriate.


Humanitarian agencies like UNHCR have provided construction support for schools and sponsored catch-up education and vocational programs for at-risk adolescents who have missed out on education. «


Edited and condensed from a story by Maya Ameratunga in Kabul, Afghanistan


UNHCR / 29


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