Afghan refugees abandoned by their own government, report finds

A displaced Afghan boy from Helmand province in a refugee camp in Kabul
A displaced Afghan boy from Helmand province in a refugee camp in Kabul. Photograph: Musadeq Sadeq/AP

About half a million Afghans have fled their homes because of violence and are living in desperate conditions with little help from a government reluctant to deal with the problems, Amnesty International says in a report.

About 400 people a day are being driven to the cities by security worries, according to the report Fleeing War, Finding Misery, on refugees who stay within Afghanistan's borders but struggle to survive in slum-like camps, with little access to water, food, decent shelter, healthcare or education.

In this year's bitter winter at least 28 children died from cold in camps in Kabul alone; nationwide more than 40 are estimated to have frozen to death, the report says.

Conflict is spreading even to once relatively peaceful parts of Afghanistan and last year more than 3,000 civilians died across the country, according to UN figures.

"We left because of war, and the bombardment from American planes," said Wakhil Khoja Muhammad, who three years ago abandoned his home in southern Sangin, one of the most fought-over districts in the country, for the Chahrai Qambar camp in Kabul.

The settlement houses about a thousand families, who Muhammad said share four hand-pumps for water.

The government often stops aid groups from making long-term improvements to conditions in most camps on the grounds that it encourages migrants to settle permanently away from their homes, the report says.

In a country already suffering from chronic unemployment, the largely uneducated and unskilled refugees struggle to find work to feed and warm their families.

"Thousands of people are finding themselves living in freezing, cramped conditions and on the brink of starvation, while the Afghan government is not only looking the other way but even preventing help from reaching them," said Horia Mosadiq, Amnesty's Afghanistan researcher. "Local officials restrict aid efforts because they want to pretend that these people are going to go away. This is a largely hidden but horrific humanitarian and human rights crisis."

The future of children living in the camps is also being compromised the report warned, with many blocked from attending local schools. Often, the reason given for the ban is that they don't have national identity cards, which they can only get in the home districts they fled in fear.

"It's hard to explain the hostility except as a combination of bias and a sense that state resources are going to people who aren't from the local communities," said Michael Bochenek, Amnesty's legal and policy director.

He said the government had been given a copy of the report, but had not yet responded to its findings.

The report was based on three years of research and interviews with more than 100 internally displaced people and returning refugees in 12 slum communities in and around Kabul, Herat in western Afghanistan and Mazar-i-Sharif in the north.

Amnesty also met government officials and international agencies.