Afghan Returns From Pakistan Pass 2.7 Million Since 2023, UN Agencies Report

More than 2.7 million Afghans have returned from Pakistan to Afghanistan since Islamabad's repatriation drive began in September 2023, according to the latest joint flash update from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which tracks border-crossing data on a rolling basis.

What the latest numbers show

The update, covering data through September 12, 2026, puts cumulative Afghan returns from Pakistan at 2,719,148 individuals since the campaign's September 2023 start. Of that total, 705,400 returned during 2026 alone — a figure that made Pakistan the source of 57.4 percent of all Afghan returns recorded regionally in 2026, according to the same reporting period. The pace has not slowed as the year has gone on: in the single week of September 6-12, 2026, UNHCR and IOM recorded 5,942 Afghans crossing back into Afghanistan through points including Torkham, Chaman, Ghulam Khan, Badini and Bahramcha. Of that week's total, 668 were recorded specifically as deportations, with the remainder processed through the voluntary return channel.

Why the numbers keep climbing

Pakistan's repatriation plan has moved in phases, each targeting a different category of Afghan resident: undocumented migrants first, then holders of Afghan Citizen Cards, and finally holders of UNHCR-issued Proof of Registration (PoR) cards — a group that numbered more than 1.4 million people before this phase began. The formal deadline for PoR holders to leave voluntarily or face deportation took effect on September 1, triggering the wave of returns UN agencies have logged since. Islamabad has defended the pace of the drive by pointing to security concerns and arguing that a long-settled refugee population has become an economic burden; UNHCR has pushed back specifically on sweeping PoR holders into forced returns, given that card was originally meant to confer longer-term protection.

The rights concern UN agencies keep raising

UNHCR's objection is not to repatriation in principle — voluntary return has always been part of its own mandate — but to the risk that genuine refugees with protection needs are being swept into deportation alongside undocumented migrants with no such claim. The agency has specifically urged Pakistan to exempt Afghans with international protection needs from involuntary return, warning that some deportees face danger under Taliban rule precisely because of why they fled in the first place. That tension — between a host country's right to end an open-ended hosting arrangement and a refugee's right not to be returned to danger — is the same one running through other rights stories out of Pakistan this year, including the UNHRC child marriage report and Balochistan's enforced-disappearances record before the UN.

The border backdrop

The repatriation drive is unfolding against a Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship already strained by recurring border violence. Islamabad has accused Kabul's Taliban administration of sheltering militants who stage cross-border attacks, a dispute that has produced repeated clashes this year, including fighting in the Gulistan border area in late September and Afghan claims of fighters killed after crossing from Pakistan. Kabul, for its part, denies harbouring anti-Pakistan groups and has called the security situation Pakistan's internal problem — the same framing that colours how each government talks about the refugees crossing between them.

What comes next

With the PoR deadline now passed and deportation figures still being added to each week, the open question is less whether the numbers keep rising — they have all year — than whether UNHCR's exemption request for refugees with protection claims gets any traction with Islamabad before the next flash update is published.

Build Better Pakistan's Rights Desk tracks Pakistan's Afghan repatriation drive and the human rights questions it continues to raise.