In Brief: New Pakistan IDPs staying mostly with relatives

Photo: Tariq Saeed/IRIN

According to UNHCR, 138,741 people are in living in 20 camps

ISLAMABAD, 22 September 2009 (IRIN) - Between 56,000 and 84,000 people have been displaced by fighting between government troops and militants which broke out in the first week of September in the Khyber Agency in northwestern Pakistan, according to a 17 September report by UN OCHA. 

UNHCR estimates that 87 percent of them have moved in with relatives and 13 percent are renting.

“I left our home in the Bara Tehsil [in Khyber Agency] two weeks ago. We took nothing but the clothes we wore. My cousin, with whom we are living in Lahore is a poor man himself, and I asked him not to buy us anything for Eid,” said Kamran Khan, 35, a father of four.

Just over one million people from northwestern Pakistan are still displaced, according to the National Database and Registration Authority. UNHCR said that of these, 138,741 are in 20 camps - seven in hosting areas and 13 in areas of return.

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