Border Monitoring, inflow - 2021

The situation inside Afghanistan deteriorated in 2021 and had significant consequences for the most vulnerable among the population. 1.6 million new arrivals have been witnessed in neighboring countries. While 5.3 million refugees returned to Afghanistan in phases since 2002, this trend has been declining in recent times with just over 6,500 people choosing to return in 2022. Since August 2021, UNHCR has maintained a non-return advisory for Afghanistan (reaffirmed February 2023), calling for a halt on forced returns of Afghan nationals. To assess people’s ability to access the right to return and map potential protection risks and human rights violations faced by people, over 55,000 interviews were conducted with people across six crossing points from Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia into Afghanistan. Interviews were conducted through out 2021. Interviewees were selected to gain an understanding of triggers, intentions and reasons for Afghan cross-border movements and assess access to territory. This dataset is the anonymized version of the original data.