The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said in a new report that a large share of undocumented Afghan returnees have been left without work and education after returning to Afghanistan, and that many of them do not earn enough to meet basic needs.<\/p>\n
According to the report, 69% of people aged 14 and above surveyed in August had no work in the 30 days before the interview. IOM said that among those who were employed, 71% were only working part-time or irregularly, while 27% had full-time jobs and just 2% owned a business.<\/p>\n
The agency added that 54% of the returnee households and individuals surveyed were unable to cover their essential needs with their income in the 30 days before the interview. Food, shelter assistance and multipurpose cash support were identified as the three main needs most frequently cited by respondents.<\/p>\n
The report also points to a wide gap in education and job skills. According to IOM, 53% of people aged 14 and above had not completed any training course, and 50% had no specialised work experience.<\/p>\n
Among young people aged 15 to 26, 55% were neither in education, nor employed, nor included in technical and vocational training programmes. The figure rose to 79% among young women, compared with 31% for young men.<\/p>\n
Among children, 51% of those aged 5 to 14 were not enrolled in education or training programmes, with girls making up the majority of this group. The findings show that for some families, return has been accompanied by continued educational deprivation.<\/p>\n
IOM said insecurity in housing was another major obstacle to the reintegration of returnees. According to the report, 77% of respondents were living in transitional shelters, and 51% did not have enough living space.<\/p>\n
The report adds that 14% of returnees have been evicted from their place of residence since returning, and in 64% of cases, inability to pay rent was the main reason for the eviction.<\/p>\n
Problems with identity documents and other required papers were also described as widespread. IOM said only 21% of the households surveyed had all the necessary family documents, while 7% had no documents at all.<\/p>\n
According to the agency, 43% of returnee households and individuals lacked the documents needed to access required services, a figure that rose to 50% at household level. At the same time, 75% of respondents were deprived of effective access to incident-response services, 62% to health services, 61% to electricity and 53% to safe drinking water.<\/p>\n
IOM said 58% of all returnees assessed were under the age of 18, and the average number of members in each returnee family was 6.1. It also said 48% of the people surveyed no longer lived in their original place of residence, with better economic opportunities and the absence or destruction of homes cited as the main reasons for the displacement.<\/p>\n
The agency added that the survey covered 1,547 undocumented Afghan returnees, including 1,267 returning families and 280 unaccompanied individuals who returned to Afghanistan between July and December 2025 after receiving assistance from IOM\u2019s cross-border programme. IOM said the findings reflect only the situation of assisted and accessible returnees and cannot be generalised to all returnees from Iran and Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
IOM says most undocumented Afghan returnees lack work, education, housing and access to essential services after returning home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-social-affairs","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}