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Hundreds of people that have been promised sanctuary in the UK are still stuck in Afghanistan greater than two years after the Taliban takeover, Lord Cameron has stated.
The overseas secretary advised MPs in a letter that fewer than 700 individuals eligible to return to the UK beneath a scheme for susceptible refugees are still in the Taliban-run nation. There has additionally been one case of an Afghan, who had been granted UK relocation and was ready in Pakistan, who was deported again to Afghanistan by the Pakistani authorities, he revealed.
The Independent has beforehand revealed that an Afghan interpreter who served with the British military was deported again to the Taliban from Pakistan whereas ready for his utility for assist to be processed. In this case, the UK authorities agreed to grant his relocation solely after he had been forcibly returned to Afghanistan. He later managed to return to Pakistan.
Foreign secretary Lord Cameron has oversight of 1 pathway of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), which is particularly for British Council lecturers and contractors, embassy safety staff, and younger students on the Chevening programme.
Despite promising to carry 1,500 individuals to the UK on this route, the federal government has dragged its heels and left many a whole bunch of those Afghans stranded in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.
Chair of the overseas affairs committee, Alicia Kearns, raised considerations concerning the schemes with Lord Cameron in a December letter, writing: “The government is far below its targets in processing and resettling eligible Afghans to the UK; why is this the case? And what are you doing to ensure the processing times are significantly accelerated?”
Lord Cameron replied saying that two flights had been charted to carry the Afghans from Pakistan to the UK in December. The first aircraft, which arrived on 13 December, introduced 246 individuals, he stated, and the second took off per week later. “Almost all of the most vulnerable undocumented” Afghans could have left Pakistan by the tip of December, Lord Cameron promised.
But he admitted that a whole bunch still stay in Afghanistan, and but others in Iran.
The Independent beforehand revealed that British diplomats had warned the federal government that Afghans eligible for sanctuary in the UK however trapped in Pakisan and Iran couldn’t be saved secure.
The authorities was compelled to begin bringing the Afghans over from Pakistan after the authorities began deporting undocumented Afghans from the nation. Prime minister Rishi Sunak – together with the house secretary, defence secretary and overseas secretary – was dealing with a number of authorized challenges from Afghans left in limbo over the federal government’s failure to relocate them.
Lord Cameron stated that “plans are in place” to carry the remainder of the 1,500 Afghans eligible for relocation beneath the Foreign Office pathway to the UK. But burdened that it will likely be “difficult to predict” how rapidly these in Afghanistan may be dropped at security.
He advised Ms Kearns: “It depends partly on them securing the necessary Afghan documentation for the Taliban to allow them to leave, and partly on securing visas from third countries such as Pakistan to allow them to cross the border”.
Referring to these trapped in Iran, he added that FCDO employees on the Tehran embassy had been working to get them out “as quickly as we can”. Two different Afghan pathways for UK resettlement are additionally being operated by the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.
Tory MP Ms Kearns stated: “Two years since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban – and up against a hard and fast-approaching deadline from the Pakistani Government – it appears we are finally seeing some movement in the right direction.
“There are still serious concerns over the danger that eligible Afghans – including those who put their lives at risk for the UK – will be deported back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This would be a betrayal of the promises we made to them and would place them in substantial peril.”
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