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Afghanistan - In response to the recent dramatic increase of Afghans returning home from neighbouring countries, as well as record levels of internal displacement, IOM is launching a new displacement tracking system in Afghanistan to better understand population movements and needs.

The sudden return of more than 600,000 registered refugees and undocumented Afghans from Pakistan, coupled with the conflict-induced displacement of over 623,000 people in 2016, could induce a severe humanitarian crisis. In 2017, a further 1 million Afghans are expected to return from Pakistan and an additional 450,000 people are expected to become internally displaced due to the ongoing conflict. Large-scale returns and intensified conflict, combined with rapid urbanization, have intensified the strain on already overstretched local services.

Further compounding concerns is a lack of clear information on the location and needs of people who have returned from outside Afghanistan or those who have been forced to leave their homes.

There is an urgent need to know where people in vulnerable situations are living and what their needs are, said IOM Afghanistan Chief of Mission Laurence Hart. With a system in place to clearly track these concerns, humanitarian actors and the Government of Afghanistan can deliver assistance and services to the families and communities that need it most.

Drawing on over a decade of experience in tracking vulnerable populations and helping ensure the targeted delivery of aid in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and other countries facing both conflict and natural disasters, IOM will launch the Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) in Afghanistan next week.

The Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) is a system that utilizes a variety of tools and processes to track and monitor population movement during crises. It regularly and systematically captures, processes and disseminates information to provide a better understanding of the movements and evolving needs of vulnerable populations, whether on site or en-route.

The first phase of the DTM in Afghanistan will put a framework in place to track various at risk populations in Nangarhar, Laghman and Kunar provinces. A two-day training on the DTM for provincial team leaders and district focal points from these areas kicked off in Jalalabad on Tuesday, 24 January.

IOM staff working in these provinces will consult with community leaders and elders, national and local authorities and previous registrations and assessments. They will also conduct visits in person to form a comprehensive picture of the estimated number of returnees from abroad, internal movements and needs and conditions at the village, district and provincial levels.

While there is good tracking along the borders, there is little knowledge of the actual final destinations, the villages and neighbourhoods, where people are arriving, said IOM Human Mobility Tracking Expert Vlatko Avramovski. The DTM will deliver this information regularly and accurately.

Data collected under the DTM will be processed, consolidated and shared on a consistent basis with the Government of Afghanistan and other humanitarian actors to flag urgent concerns, facilitate the delivery of assistance and help plan for durable solutions.

Following the successful implementation of first phase, IOM Afghanistan will expand the DTMs coverage to other provinces with significant numbers of returnees.

Funding for the DTM in Afghanistan is provided by the governments of Germany, Japan, Norway and Sweden. Learn more about the DTM worldwide at http://www.globaldtm.info/.

For further information, please contact Matt Graydon in Jalalabad, Email: mgraydon@iom.int, Tel: +93729229129.

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IOM Launches Displacement Tracking in Afghanistan as ... - ReliefWeb - Reliefweb

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Letter to the editor: Sen. John McCain says we should keep spending American cash on Afghanistan. Is he serious?

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Robert Kaul 5:14 p.m. MT Jan. 26, 2017

Sen. John McCain arrives for the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2017.(Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP)

John McCain criticizes the budget director nominee for wanting or get our troops and spending out of Afghanistan. What is Senator McCains plan? We have been there for nearly 17 years.

Tell us, senator, how much are you willing to spend and how long are you willing to spend it on this useless occupation of a very poor, rural, mostly illiterate Muslim nation?

Robert Kaul,Scottsdale

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Letter: Is McCain serious about Afghanistan? - AZCentral.com

Suzanne Steele recalls a winter where dozens of children in a Kabul refugee camp froze to death.

Embedded with the Canadian Forcesin Afghanistan as Canada's War Poet, Steele wanted to give voice to those children and the countless others who have died due to war in that country.

In thesymphonic piece, Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation, which is having its Vancouver premiere Friday, Steele attempts to do that with a choir of Langley children.

The music was written by composer Jeffrey Ryan. Steele wrote the words.

"It was extremely important for me that their voices were heard," she told On The Coast's Lisa Christiansen. "If we could rain thousands and thousands of tons of ordinance on the desert, against each other, why can't we rain blankets for these children?"

Steele's requiemis the product of her time as an artist in the war torn nation with the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry from 2008 to 2010.

The Vancouver-born Steele says the traditional Catholic song for the dead is the most appropriate way of expressing what she witnessed duringthat time.

The day after Remembrance Day 2010 was when Steele began working on the project with Ryan, the composer,who is also based in Vancouver.

They spent two yearson it, attempting to capture the experiences of soldiers and civilians.

Suzanne Steele (centre) with Canadian soldiers training at CFB Wainwright before deploying to Afghanistan. (warpoet.ca)

"We try to evoke the response after a soldier steps on an [improvised explosive device]," Steele said. "I asked Jeff, could we have SOS in Morse code embedded into? Dit-dit-dit-daht-daht-daht-dit-dit-dit."

Ryan says the hour-long requiem, performed with a children's choir, an adult choir, four soloists and an orchestra in four languages English, French, Latin and Pashtun was challenging to put together.

But it's also important, he says, especially because of its timing.

"It's [about] 100 years since World War I, the war that supposed to end all wars," he said. "I think it's really important to remind everyone these things are still happening, that 'the war to end all wars' didn't end all wars.

"What are we going to do about that?"

With files from CBC Radio One's On The Coast

War poet Suzanne Steele (left) and composer Jeffrey Ryan are the collaborators behind Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation. (Lisa Christiansen/CBC)

To hear the full story, click the audio labelled:Canadian war poet tells story of Afghanistan in requiem with VSO

See the article here:
Canadian war poet tells story of Afghanistan in requiem with VSO - CBC.ca

January 26, 2017 6:35 PM By Derrick Blakley

(CBS) President Trump was in Philadelphia today following his first interview with ABC News, where he took another swipe at Chicago crime.

Its horrible carnage. This isAfghanistan is not like whats happening in Chicago. People are being shot left and right, he said.

CBS 2s Derrick Blakley reports.

Chicago civic leaders at the City Club disputed the presidents dire view.

Chicago is not Afghanistan. It does make a good tweet, said Urban League CEO Shari Runner.

It does make good media play. But the city is not a war zone and we should not treat it as such, she added.

But city club speakers dont want to sugarcoat Chicagos homicide problem. The city has seen a 58% spike in murders from 2016.

Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago Crime lab said his group looked at data from the five largest cities in the US in the past 25 years.

Not a single city has experienced a change of this size, he said.

President Trump thinks the violence problem can be fixed by getting tougher and stronger and smarter.

In response to getting tougher on crime, Chicago Police Department Patrol Chief Fred Waller cracked a joke about the absence of his boss, Eddie Johnson, saying hes back at headquarters opening the waterboarding kit that Washington sent us.

Congresswoman Robin Kelly has already gone directly to the top, inviting the new president to her district.

Hes talking about carnage and this, that and the other. Let him meet some of the people, let him see whats going on, she said.

According to Ludwig, a quarter of Chicagos murder suspects are under age 19, which is far higher than other cities.

This means mentoring programs, like those promoted by Mayor Emanuel, could make an impact.

Three quarters of murder suspects are young adults as well, meaning better education, job training and access to actual jobs could benefit them.

Derrick Blakley is a general assignment reporter for CBS 2 Chicago. Send An E-Mail To Derrick Blakley In June 2003, Blakley returned to CBS after 15 years at NBC 5 Chicago. Previously, he had worked for CBS News for seven years, based in...

Continued here:
Chicago Leaders Fire Back At Trump's Afghanistan Reference - CBS Local

In the third part of Refugees DeeplysReturn to Afghanistan series, Umer Ali meets transgender refugees who fear that being forced to leave Pakistan amounts to a death sentence.

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN You cannot talk to Gulalai in the language of her adopted country. Despite living in Pakistan for the past 17 years, she has been unable to properly learn Urdu and remains confined to her native Pashto. As a member of the transgender community, language is just one of the barriers she faces.

I never learned Urdu because I rarely go out of the small world we have created for ourselves [to stay safe], she says in Pashto.

Gulalai left Afghanistan when she was only eight years old. Now a shy 25-year-old, she speaks only when spoken to.

Whatever the constraints of her life in Pakistan, she is certain that it offers a better future than her birth country, to which Pakistan is coercing waves of former refugees to return.

Only fragments of memory remain from Gulalais childhood somewhere in the suburbs of the capital, Kabul. She was born a boy but realized as a small child that she was meant to be a girl. Her parents were determined she would grow up to be a man, and when she failed to live up to this, they beat her.

The punishments were harsh and relentless. Aged eight, she found the courage to run away. From Kabul she made her way to Jalalabad, where she found some protection from others in what we would now know as the transgender community.

All that is left from her family memories are some pain and wistful thoughts of her lost younger brother. She remembers him having a limp, but cannot recall his name. I always wonder what happened to him, she says.

Once in Pakistan, she was introduced to someone she was told was a guru an elder in the transgender community who took her in. Like so many trans youngsters, she grew into one of the only professions open to her, that of a dancer.

Most of the transgender people are either thrown out or run away from their homes at an early age, says Farzana Jan, a transgender activist whose home in Peshawar is a meeting point for the community. One of the leaders of rights group Trans Action Alliance, based in the capital of KP (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) province, she explains the bind that Gulalai and others are in: They neither get formal education nor any professional training. So they cant get into a profession deemed respectable by the rest of society.

Among those who do not become dancers, Farzana says, many find work on Dalazak Road, Peshawars red-light district. Dancers are in demand for public events such as weddings, and Gulalai remembers how she shook with fear on her first outings.

I realized that I would have to dance in order to survive because my guru expected me to earn money. We are often teased, groped and abused by men.

However, even this precarious life is now under threat.

Pakistan is determined to send Afghan refugees back, after a string of terror attacks blamed on Afghan insurgents. Many Afghans face police harassment in Pakistan and have elected reluctantly to return. But even this option is complicated for Gulalai.

Im neither an Afghan national nor a Pakistani national, she says, her face wrinkling into tears.

Umer Ali

Gulalais estrangement from her family means she has no record of her birth or paperwork to support her Afghan citizenship. Unable to prove her Afghan nationality, she has not been registered by authorities in Pakistan as a refugee.

When a deadline was announced for Afghans to leave Pakistan, many transgender refugees turned to Farzana Jan for help and advice. I told them I would try my best, but even then, I knew I couldnt do much, she says.

Life without papers is claustrophobic for Gulalai. She cannot travel to other cities without an I.D. card to show at the security checkpoints; this also prevents her from something as straightforward as having a cellphone registered in her name.

I cant have a SIM [card] in my name because Im not registered in the Pakistani governments database.

Gulalai shudders at the notion of going back to Afghanistan. Like all members of the trans community, she has heard the horrific tales of violence in the country of her childhood.

We have received several videos of violence against the transgender community in Afghanistan, says Farzana. In many areas of Afghanistan, the body parts of transgender people are chopped off before they are killed.

She relates the story of one transgender Afghan refugee who left Pakistan three years ago. She started dancing at weddings in Jalalabad [in eastern Afghanistan], but was soon arrested by the police because its forbidden to do so.

Shes still stuck in an Afghan jail where shes forced to live in the mens section, often getting harassed and abused.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), which is facilitating the return of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, has faced criticism for legitimizing what critics say amounts to forced returns.

Duniya Aslam Khan, the UNHCR spokesperson in Pakistan, says the agency is aware of fears among the Afghan trans community and would make them a priority: Transgender people are more than welcome to contact us to discuss their issues. We understand their issues and are very sensitive toward them.

Trans Action Alliance says they have repeatedly approached the UNHCR for help in registering stateless transgender refugees, but received no response.

Gulalais fears are shared by Sapna, a 22-year-old transgender Afghan who identifies as male, who came to Pakistan with his parents in the 1980s. Sapna is a self-taught tailor and embroiderer, but has struggled to find work in Peshawar.

He says that he survives thanks to the close bonds of the trans community, some of whom bring their clothes to him to repair. Like Gulalai, Sapna is stateless a citizen of neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan.

In other countries, if you were born and lived there for 10 years you could acquire their nationality but not in Pakistan, he complains. I dont want to go back to Afghanistan and get butchered there. I would prefer to be punished by the Pakistani government.

Amna Nasir contributed to this report.This article originally appeared onRefugees Deeply. For weekly updates and analysis about refugee issues, you cansign up to the Refugees Deeply email list.

See the original post here:
Transgender Refugees In Pakistan Fear Death Upon Return Home To Afghanistan - Huffington Post