KABUL (TCA) — Afghanistan has agreed to help the European Union forcibly return thousands of migrants by issuing travel documents and accepting them on return flights, RFE/RL reports.
The agreement was published on October 4, the first day of a donors conference for Afghanistan in Brussels, co-hosted by the European Union and the Government of Afghanistan, after Germany said it would make future aid for Afghanistan conditional on Kabul helping to repatriate migrants.
The EU is considering returning 80,000 Afghan migrants, dpa reported. More than 170,000 Afghan nationals applied for asylum in the EU in 2015, making it the second-largest group behind Syrians.
Under the deal, Kabul is to provide travel documents within four weeks for any Afghan migrant the EU decides to return home, or the EU can issue its own travel documents.
“Faced with unprecedented migratory challenges, the European Union and Afghanistan continue close engagement to discuss migration issues through the Senior Officials’ Dialogue on Migration. The meeting of the Dialogue took place on 4 October, shortly after the signature of the ‘EU-Afghanistan Joint Way Forward on migration issues’,” the European External Action Service said in a press release.
This document expresses a joint political commitment to effectively tackle the challenges linked to irregular migration, ensuring that asylum seekers whose applications do not meet the EU rules following all due processes will be properly reintegrated back to Afghanistan.
The result of six-month long negotiations, the “Joint Way Forward” provides a comprehensive framework for the future cooperation on return, readmission and reintegration. It also seeks to jointly find solutions to common problems: raising awareness of the risks of irregular migration, breaking the smugglers’ models and providing sustainable reception and reintegration for those who return to Afghanistan. It is a triple-win solution for Afghanistan, the European Union and its Member States, the EU said.
