Ayaz Gul VOA News January 21, 2017 ISLAMABAD — The United Nations appealed Saturday for $550 million in humanitarian assistance in 2017 to meet the needs of Afghans affected by conflict, or natural disasters, and for those returning home from neighboring countries. The assistance will reach an estimated 5.7 million “most vulnerable and marginalized” people in
Tolo News: Research by the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation has found that the migrant phenomenon has injected at least $7 billion USD into the country’s economy since March. The money has come into Afghanistan through international aid for migrants and from contributions sent home by almost six million Afghans living outside the country. Click here
Brownsville Herald: Roin Khurami had never been hugged by a female who wasn’t related to him. And yet here she was — a woman he’d just met — embracing him at the BrownsvilleSouthPadre Island International Airport. She was there to pick up Khurami for a friend, South Padre Island resident Will Everett, who had secured a
BBC News: An Afghan woman made famous by a 1985 National Geographic cover has spoken exclusively to the BBC of her hope for a new beginning, after being deported from Pakistan. Sharbat Gula now lives with her five-year-old son and three daughters in Kabul, where she says she wants to live a normal life after years
Reuters: More than 9,400 undocumented Afghans have returned home from Iran and Pakistan in the first week of 2017, raising concerns over how the war-torn Asian nation will cope with the rising influx, the United Nations said on Wednesday. The vast majority were young men crossing the border from Iran. Click here to read more (external
DW: Conflict has displaced people in nearly all of Afghanistan’s provinces, according to the UN. Germany’s government argues that there are safe regions in the war-torn country which deportees could return to safely. Click here to read more (external link). Related Afghanistan now a ‘continual emergency’, as war drives record numbers from their homes Migrants Battle
The Guardian (UK): A petition signed by more than 14,000 people to try to save a young man who fled to Britain from Afghanistan as a 10-year-old from being sent back has been handed to the Home Office. Bashir Naderi, who has grown up in Cardiff, came within hours of being forcibly returned to Afghanistan in
The Wall Street Journal: A breakdown in Afghanistan’s relationship with Pakistan has driven a flood of Afghans living there to return, severely straining their war-ravaged homeland’s resources just as it is experiencing an escalation of violence. Click here to read more (external link).
VOA News January 2, 2017 Afghanistan’s first female fixed wing pilot in the country’s air force awaits a response to her asylum request to the United States, which she filed last month after receiving threats from Taliban insurgents, according to her lawyer. “Her reason for seeking asylum in the United States is she’s in fear
The Boston Globe: There is much that is compelling about the story of Captain Niloofar Rahmani, Afghanistan’s first female military pilot, who just completed flight training in the United States. It is a remarkable achievement for any Afghan woman to rise to such public professional heights. All of which makes her recently revealed request for asylum