UNHCR closes two iris verification centres in Pakistan

As the number of Afghans repatriating to their homeland falls, the UN refugee agency has announced the closure of two of its iris scanning centres in Pakistan, which had been set up to verify the entitlement of returnees to avail themselves of repatriation assistance. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was operating four Iris Verification Centres (IVCs) at its four departure centres in the two Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta, located close to the Afghan border. Iris verification is a requirement for every Afghan over the age of six wishing to receive the UNHCR repatriation assistance package. According to the UNHCR press statement, Afghan refugees returning from the NWFP (North-West Frontier Province) and Punjab will now be processed only at the Hayatabad IVC in Peshawar. Refugees returning from Balochistan will go through the Baleli IVC in Quetta while those from Sindh can use either centre before exiting Pakistan, the statement said. The number of returning refugees reaches a peak in the summer and is minimal during the harsh Afghan winter, the UNHCR statement said. The unique iris-recognition technology was introduced by UNHCR in September 2002 to ensure that assistance was given only to deserving Afghan refugees. The process detects anyone who has previously been through the procedure and tries to claim return assistance a second time. The iris verification process takes an image of an iris, storing it in the form of a number without recording the person's name, gender, age or destination. The technology has no effect on the eye. Due to cultural sensitivities, UNHCR female repatriation staff check female Afghan returnees to ensure that their faces are not seen by male staff. The UNHCR's voluntary repatriation programme is scheduled to run until March 2006 under a tripartite agreement between the UNHCR and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Over 2.26 million Afghan refugees have returned to Afghanistan so far with UNHCR assistance since the repatriation programme started in March 2002, the agency statement said.