Journey of Hope 2017 journey-of-hope-2017 | Page 16

PREVENTING ANOTHER LOST GENERATION:
EDUCATING REFUGEES
WILL SAVE A NATION
by Katie Smith
F
For 32 years in a row Afghanistan held
the record for producing the largest num-
ber of refugees until the crises in Syria sur-
passed the record in 2014. Afghanistan has
been mired in war — bloody coups, internal
clashes, and outside occupation — since
the Saur Revolution in 1978. The United
Nations High Commissioners for Refugees
(UNHCR) estimates that nearly 6 million
people have fled their homes in Afghanistan,
including more than 700,000 internally dis-
placed people.
The majority of those refugees fled to
neighboring Pakistan and Iran and settled
14 | JOURNEY OF HOPE
At Kamp-e Farm Hada Girls’ High School
in Nangarhar, Afghanistan a young student
works on completing an exercise.
in camps and villages along the border.
They earned educations, started families,
and built lives in their host countries while
war raged on in Afghanistan. Other families
stayed, seeking shelter in distant villages,
creating unofficial camps, and moving to
avoid ever-shifting conflict.
HOMELESS IN THE HOMELAND
Though the condition in Afghanistan is
far from stabilizing, refugees are returning
by the thousands. In 2016 aid organizations
estimate that more than 700,000 refugees
returned under growing pressure from the
Pakistani government. A report from the
International Monetary Fund from that year
says, “Analysts project that up to 2.5 million
will follow over the next 18 months, which
will add nearly 10 percent to Afghanistan’s
population.”
The situation for Afghan refugees in
Pakistani border towns has become ten-
uous. Education for children is harder to
obtain and pressure from both local and
national governments has instigated a mass
exodus. Many of these refugees have no
homes to return to, and Afghanistan has be-
come a foreign land. They settle in villages
CENTRAL ASIA INSTITUTE