[Reader-list] Kashmiri Pandit migrants are internally displaced: UN

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

 Kashmiri Pandit migrants are internally displaced: UN
PTI

   New Delhi, Nov 03: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said
it treats Kashmiri Pandit migrants as 'Internally Displaced Persons', a
status the community has been demanding for long, but made it clear that the
world body has no role to play in their case.

"The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has no role with Internally Displaced Persons
in India," the world body said in response to a memorandum submitted by a
Kashmiri Pandit group 'Roots in Kashmir' (RIK).

In the memorandum, submitted during the visit of UN Secretary General Ban Ki
Moon last Friday, the Kashmiri group appealed that the world body take
cognisance of the plight of Pandits who had to leave their homes in the
valley.

The RIK said that even 19 years after the mass exodus, over 50,000 of
"Kashmiri Pandit refugees are living in pathetic conditions in uninhabitable
refugee camps" and that the successive Central and state governments had
failed in protecting their rights.

In response, the UNHCR said its mandate is to work for refugees and "in some
countries, on invitation by sovereign governments, with internally displaced
populations".

Making a distinction between internally displaced persons and refugees, it
said it depends on whether the people have crossed an international border.

"They (Kashmiri Pandits) may have left Kashmir for reasons very similar to
those who become refugees, but since they have not crossed an international
border, they continue to be protected by the same national government (in
this case India) in a different part of the country (Jammu, Delhi, Mumbai,
etc)," it said.

"They have not lost the protection of the national government," the UNHCR
said, adding the world body steps in when people lose the protection of
their national governments, by crossing an international border.

*'276,000 Afghan refugees returned this year'*

More than 276,000 Afghan refugees have returned to their troubled homeland
this year, most of them from Pakistan, under a voluntary repatriation
programme, the UN refugee agency said today.

The programme, which has wrapped up for the year ahead of winter, is the
largest in the world with more then five million Afghans coming home since
2002 after the fall of the extremist Taliban regime.

"The official figure for returnees to Afghanistan this year from Pakistan,
Iran and what we call non-neighbouring countries is 276,700," UN High
Commissioner for Refugees official Ewen McLeod told reporters.

Bureau Report

Link - http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=480822&sid=NAT


-- 
Aditya Raj Kaul

Freelance Correspondent, The Times of India
Cell - +91-9873297834

Campaign Blog: http://kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com/
Personal Blog: http://activistsdiary.blogspot.com/