15 July 2010 - Working with local Afghan partners, the United Nations refugee agency has been providing building materials and cash grants averaging US $100 to hundreds of families crossing back home from Pakistan as part of initial reintegration support in the country.

Sher Ahmad is a recipient of one of the nearly 1,000 shelter assistance packages distributed in the Paktya and Khost province in the southeast. He was selected by a committee comprised of representatives from the local shura (council), district representatives, Department of Refugees and Repatriation shelter implementing partner and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) who review requests from families who can prove legal ownership of or right to the land.

“I was worried about constructing additional rooms as I did not have enough money for it, but when I returned with my family, UNHCR provided housing construction items that enabled me to construct additional rooms,” said Ahmad who resettled with his seven-member family in Gulwal, the village in which he was born in the Paktya province.

The shelter assistance package provides material for a standard two room dwelling with a separate toilet, including timber, roofing materials, metal doors, glass windows and nails.

The programme gives priority to vulnerable households, widows, the disabled and the elderly, with a current beneficiary ration of 51 per cent women and 49 per cent men, according to Khan Mohammad Sultani, senior field assistant with UNHCR.

Some 2.7 million Afghan refugees are registered in Pakistan and Iran. The UN agency announced last month that some 70,000 of them had returned home since January this year.

By Dilawar Khan Dilawar, UNAMA