Living Conditions and Settlement Decisions of Recent Afghan Returnees: Findings from a 2018 Phone Survey of Afghan Returnees and UNHCR Data

Abstract

This report is the result of a collaboration between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank Group (WBG). Repatriation or the return of refugees to their country of origin has been rarely studied, and data on their socio-economic outcomes is sparsely available. In such a context, the World Bank and UNHCR teams attempted to make good use of the existing data sources and complemented it with new data collection methods to better understand the patterns and characteristics of recent Afghan refugee returns. More specifically, the team attempted to analytically connect insights between different data sources to explore (albeit imperfectly) questions of selection among Afghans who remained in Pakistan and those documented returnees who returned to Afghanistan.