KABUL - As World Refugee Day is marked, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) indicated that the flow of Afghan refugees returning home continues but at a slower rate.The UNHCR noted that nearly a quarter of the worldwide population of refugees are from Afghanistan. Indeed, nearly 2.7 Afghans still live in Pakistan and Iran. The UNHCR reported that although 5.7 million Afghan refugees have returned home since 2002, Afghanistan remains the leading country of origin for asylum seekers.

While refugees continue to return to Afghanistan, they are returning in smaller numbers as compared with previous two years. So far in 2012, about 34,000 refugees have returned to Afghanistan.

The situation of Narullah, a 32 year old Afghan baker who spent the past 13 years in Pakistan is indicative of the story of many returnees.

“The cost of living was expensive in Karachi, my income was low and I couldn’t support my family, neither could I pay the house rent” said Narullah, who originally hails from Aqcha, Jawzjan province and who recently returned to Afghanistan.

When Narullah returned to Afghanistan his first stop was at the Jamal Mayna Encashment Center, a transit center run by the Department of Reintegration and Repatriation with support from the UNHCR. The center, located outside Kandahar, is a place families can stay up to three days before moving on to the site of their new homes in Afghanistan.

The Jamal Mayna Center and other like it are busy. Each day about 150 people arrive in buses and trucks from Pakistan. At the center each returnee can receive lessons on hygiene, drug and land mine awareness as well as medical checkups. They each also receive $150 before they leave.

Their decision to return is usually taken weeks of discussions with their contacts, friends and families in Afghanistan. Returnees to Afghanistan often face challenges in starting new lives.

“According to research about 60 percent of returnees over the last 10 years have had lower living standards than their countrymen,” said Nadar Farhad, a spokesman for the UNHCR. “It is important to provide returnees with reintegration and development assistance as well as basic services.”

To help overcome these initial hardships UNHCR, along with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development have established 48 pilot reintegration sites throughout the country in areas where high numbers of returnees have settled. UNDP, UNOPS, ILO and other UN agencies also contribute to this program. The sites feature schools, community centers, access to clean water, electricity and programs to train returnees, particularly young people, to become economically self-sufficient.

Even after they’ve reached their homes challenges remain.

“We will not return to Pakistan, we will work with the system that is already in place and in the next few years we will have our own house” said Narullah.