UN: Large-scale return of Afghan refugees strains Afghan economy

Washington — Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Dari article.

The return of millions of Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan has put pressure on the Afghan economy, according to the United Nations.

The United Nations Development Program in Afghanistan said Tuesday in a post on X that the large-scale return of Afghans has added “pressure on jobs, essential services and infrastructure.”

The U.N. said that nearly 1.3 million Afghans have returned, including those deported, from Pakistan and Iran, the two countries hosting most of Afghan refugees, to Afghanistan, so far in 2026.

UNDP adds that between 2023 and 2025, about 4.9 million Afghans returned to the country.

Even with the millions of returns, the U.N. says that 4.4 million Afghans are still living in Iran, including 1.4 million undocumented Afghans. About 1.6 million Afghans live in Pakistan including an estimated 159 thousand undocumented Afghans.

The U.N. said that “policy changes and economic pressures” in host countries have led to large-scale deportations and returns of Afghans.

The returns have further burdened vulnerable communities and essential services, according to the U.N.

The World Food Program said about 19.2 million people face acute food insecurity, while 4 million women and children are expected to suffer from malnutrition in 2027.

Afghan returnees are “with few or no resources, leaving them to settle in remote mountainous areas far from major roads and essential services. They live in makeshift shelters, often just tents under the scorching sun or on bare stones, with no access to clean water, food, or even basic shelter,” said the UNHCR. “Healthcare is out of reach, and many lack even the simplest identification documents, leaving them vulnerable and invisible in the margins of society.

Mohammad Bashir Doodyal, a former economics professor at Kabul University, told VOA that poverty, a lack of job opportunities and presence of diseases could pose major challenges to the integration of returnees into Afghan society.

“It is the responsibility of governments to plan ... to address these issues,” said Doodyal, adding that “it looks there are no such plans in place.”

He added that Afghanistan would need to improve its relations with neighboring countries and the international community to attract domestic and foreign investment needed to strengthen the economy.

“Afghanistan must emerge from isolation and have a government that the international community can trust and work with,” Doodyal said.

Khan Jan Alokozay, president of the Afghan chapter of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told VOA that neither the government nor the private sector has the capacity to absorb millions of Afghans at once.