Aid group urges halt to expulsion of Afghan refugees over dire conditions
Voice of America
FILE - Afghan refugees deported from Pakistan wait to receive food aid by Red Cross Society in Kandahar on Jan. 24, 2024 FILE - Afghan refugees wait to register in a camp near the Torkham Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Torkham, Afghanistan, Nov. 4, 2023.
A global humanitarian agency warned Afghanistan's neighbors Wednesday against expelling millions of refugees in the coming months, citing the country’s unpreparedness due to decades of conflict, economic devastation, and climate-related challenges. The Norwegian Refugee Council, or NRC, reported that Iran plans to expel up to 2 million Afghan refugees by March, while at least 800,000 have already been deported from Pakistan since October 2023. ”The many vulnerable Afghans already returning from Iran, whom I met at the border this week, feel they live in an enduring limbo,” stated Jan Egeland, the NRC secretary-general. “They left Afghanistan in search of a better and safer life and are now returning to an uncertain future in Afghanistan, where they face the same unemployment, hunger, and human rights violations that made them leave their homeland in the first place,” he said.
President Donald Trump signs an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the Oval Office of the White House, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington.
FILE - Activists commiserate in Nairobi on May 24, 2019, after the Kenyan High Court upheld laws criminalizing same-sex relations. Reactions in Africa to U.S. President Donald Trump's Jan. 20, 2025, executive orders regarding LGBTQ people ranged from "excited" to defiant.
FILE - Indonesia's Foreign Minister Sugiono arrives at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, Oct. 24, 2024. FILE - Security agents walk with sniffer dogs as they check the United Nations Security Council hall before a meeting to discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, at the U.N. headquarters in New York, Aug. 3, 2024.
FILE - Marco Rubio testifies before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on his nomination to be Secretary of State, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Jan. 15, 2025.
Firefighters work to extinguish a fire at a hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya in Bolu, Turkey, Jan. 21, 2025. Ihlas News Agency (IHA) via REUTERS
Protesters demand further investigation as they suspect more people were involved in the crime, after a court sentenced Sanjay Roy, a police volunteer, to life in prison in the rape and killing of trainee doctor last year, in Kolkata, India, Jan. 20, 2025.
This photograph shows a sign of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at the Congress center, during the WEF annual meeting in Davos on Jan. 20, 2025.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Argentina's President Javier Milei arrive for the inauguration of Donald Trump at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
A 5-year-old girl, sitting in her wheelchair, waits to be treated at the ICRC hospital, in Goma, on Jan. 20, 2025. Seriously injured patients requiring oxygen are treated in the intensive care unit of the ICRC hospital in Goma, on Jan. 20, 2025. A patient with a leg injury, left, sits next to a patient from Pinga, in Masisi territory, shot in the foot, at the ICRC hospital, in Goma, on Jan. 20, 2025.
FILE - UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters fly during a military parade to mark the third anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan, in Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, Aug. 14, 2024.
FILE - U.S. President Donald Trump talks to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, July 11, 2018.
A man sits on a lounge chair atop a heavily-damaged building along Saftawi street in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Jan. 20, 2025 a day after a ceasefire deal in the war between Israel and Hamas went into effect. Palestinian prisoners (back) wait to disembark from a Red Cross bus upon their arrival in the occupied West Bank town of Beitunia, on the outskirts of Ramallah, following their release by Israel in the early hours of Jan. 20, 2025. Trucks loaded with aid wait to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Jan. 19, 2025.
FILE - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gestures during a press conference in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 12, 2024.
FILE - Rescuers cross the caution tape near a Metalliferous Mobile Rescue Winder during a rescue operation to retrieve illegal miners from an abandoned gold shaft in Stilfontein on Jan. 13, 2025.
FILE - Afghan women wait to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group, in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 23, 2023.
FILE - A Ukrainian serviceman collects evidence following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 18, 2025.
FILE - A Taiwan national flag flutters near the Taipei 101 building at the National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, May 7, 2023.
Debra Tice, mother of journalist Austin Tice who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, speaks after an interview with Reuters in Damascus, Syria, Jan. 18, 2025.