BAMYAN - Two villages with a large number of returnee families on the eastern fringes of Band-i-Amir Lake in central Afghanistan’s Bamyan province are benefitting from stepped-up assistance provided by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The UN refugee agency is constructing a dam and mini hydro-electric station on the river that flows down to Kooprok village, some 71 kilometres northwest of the province’s capital, also known as Bamyan.

The mini hydro-power project, with a production capacity of 15 kilowatts, will provide electricity for the neighbouring villages of Kooprok and Ab-Qul. The first is currently home to 256 families, 153 of them returnee families and internally displaced persons (IDPs), while the second is home to 85 families, 45 of them returnee families.

“Due to its proximity to Kooprok, certain [UNHCR] interventions will benefit both Ab-Qul and Kooprok,” said a UNHCR official, Jawad Wafa.

A returnee is a refugee who has returned to his or her home location. Most of the Kooprok villagers left their homes in the early 1980s as fighting in the area made it impossible to find work or food. There was further displacement during the rule of the Taliban regime, with families fleeing to Iran and Pakistan, as well as other locations within Afghanistan, according to UNHCR’s Mr. Wafa. He added that 158 Kooprok families are yet to return to the village.

The Bamyan programme is one of many carried out by the UN agency to support returnees and IDPs in Afghanistan.

In a report released on the eve of World Refugee Day on 20 June, UNHCR said Afghanistan remains the world’s top producer of refugees, a position it has held for 32 years. On average, one out of every four refugees worldwide is Afghan, with 95 per cent of them living in Pakistan or Iran, said the 2012 Global Trends Report.

Speaking at a ceremony organized in the Afghan capital, Kabul, to mark the Day, both UN and Afghan officials called for collective efforts and durable solutions to address the problems of refugees and IDPs.

During a recent visit to Kooprok in Bamyan’s Yakawlang district, a UN team comprising staff from UNHCR and the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) listened to the concerns of Kooprok and Ab-Qul villagers. One of the items discussed was the villages’ stranding for up to five months, from mid-November until early April, during the country’s winter season. Often, heavy snowfalls block the two roads connecting their villages to the newly paved Yakawlang Road and to the nearby Band-i-Amir national park.

In 2010, UNHCR built 21 shelters in the area – 15 in Kooprok and another six in Ab-Qul. This year, the agency is building 25 two-room shelters for Kooprok’s homeless returnees from Iran and Pakistan, and for members of the local population who have been living with their relatives as they have no houses of their own.

Through its Cash-for-Work programme, UNHCR is constructing a water reservoir and excavating a water source north-east of Band-i-Amir to increase the supply of irrigation water for agriculture in the two villages.

And, to serve as year-round pass for villagers and vehicles bringing basic necessities to the returnee families, UNHCR is constructing a bridge over the seasonally flooded river at Kooprok village in Yakawlang. A 1.3-kilometre stretch of internal road is also being paved and installed with culverts by UNHCR’s project partners for smoother travel around the village of Kooprok.

“We are very happy with all these projects that UNHCR and the other agencies are implementing in our village to make life easier for us,” said the head of the Kooprok Village Council, Sayed Ali.