Wednesday February 17, 2016
Kabul (BNA) Humanitarian calamities have caused more than one million immigrants to seek asylum to European countries over the last year.
Afghanistan is reportedly the second country that had the most immigrants, whom have been travelling across the Mediterranean Sea or through Southeast Europe. Since collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001, close to six million Afghans had been returned home. But, unfortunately, insecurity has once again forced many of them to leave their country. Around 2.5 million Afghans are living in Pakistan and more than one million in Iran. During the last two years, after withdrawal of huge number of foreign forces and organizations from Afghanistan and taking the control of many provinces and districts by insurgent groups, another wave of immigrations have started. Based on Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) statistics, violence and instability in 21 provinces of Afghanistan have caused more than 1.2 million Afghanistan to seek refuge in foreign countries in 2015, as 154,000 Afghan immigrants had been registered in Germany last year.
Afghan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Salahuddin Rabbani in ambassadors’ summit attended by Italy, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Czech, Finland, Holland, Deputy European Union Representative and Charge D’Affaires of Romania and Norway countries, said, Afghanistan asks the European countries to help prevent immigrations and organize the process of volunteer return. Unemployment, economic poverty, insecurity in Afghanistan is the main aspects caused a huge number of Afghans to migrate, and it has been increased during the outgoing year. This is while that during immigrations, many people have been sunk in water or frozen to death. Therefore, the government should step up in this respect and take some short-term and long-term measures to prevent immigrations in the country. Noori