Xinhua: Continued Taliban-led insurgency, insecurity incidents, high rate of unemployment and poverty have been main obstacle to delay the return of over six million Afghan refugees from neighboring states. “Almost all Afghan refugees living in neighboring country of Iran prefer to return home country, but they were forced to stay abroad due to continued war, insecurity and high rate of unemployment in Afghanistan,”...      Full news...

IRIN: Clashes between government forces and the Taliban have displaced at least 12,000 people in Afghanistan’s remote northwestern province of Faryab, creating a dire need for water, sanitation and other essentials, the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) warns.      Full news...

Wakht News Agency: United Nation High Commission for Refugees UNHCR had expressed concern over the internally displaced people in Afghanistan according to the reports provided by this office and the World Bank in Kabul, Herat and Kandahar provinces. Research said unemployment, lack of shelter and poverty were the main challenges faced by the internally displaced individuals...      Full news...

IRIN: One irony of the current security situation in Afghanistan is that foreign forces, whose ostensible aim is to protect civilians while fighting the Taliban, may be responsible - directly or indirectly - for the bulk of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country, whose number is rising.      Full news...

PAN: Iran’s border police killed eight Afghans trying to cross the border into the neighbouring country near the Islam Qala dry port in western Herat province, an official said on Thursday. The Afghans were killed by Iranian border police guards when they attempted to enter Iran last Friday night, a police official, who did not want to be named, told Pajhwok Afghan News.      Full news...

Xinhua: No education, lack of food and winter clothes. In Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, hundreds of war displaced children and their families are crying for relief assistance from the government. Currently, there are 804 families living in the slum, in west of the city, with the largest family of 15 children. “We do not have enough food and clothes. We need help,” said Wakiltawos Khan, head of the slum.      Full news...

AFP: cargo ship rescued scores of Afghan migrants in heavy seas off the Greek island of Corfu Sunday following a night of drama, but survivors said 21 more were missing after falling overboard. Rescue services were alerted during the night after the 35-metre (114-foot) Hasan Reis vessel packed with more than 200 migrants, including women and children, reported it was taking on water, said the merchant marine ministry in a statement.      Full news...

IRIN: Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from insurgency-hit Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, need food assistance urgently, officials told IRIN. About 900 displaced families in the provincial capital Lashkargah have little or no means to feed themselves and their children this winter, according to Ghulam Farouq Noorzai, director of Helmand’s refugees and returnee affairs department.      Full news...

PAN: Though the Iranian embassy in Kabul has called a video clip showing some dead and wounded Afghan refugees lying on the ground as fake, relatives of the victims have asked the Afghan government to react seriously to the brutal action by Iranian border police. It is not clear when the footage, obtained by a private TV channel Tolo, has been recorded.      Full news...

New York Times: A girl was keeled over in pain, silent in her agony. She held herself tightly rocking, head down on her knees. “Sick, sick,” an old woman told us, showing us around the camp. In the neighboring tent, the girl’s newborn was sleeping. She was too sick to feed the baby. We were alarmed. It was the summer of 2009, and I was in Afghanistan with a fellow graduate student who wanted to build a school there.      Full news...

VOA: Growing insecurity and unemployment in Afghanistan is forcing Afghans into the capital, across borders and into the insurgency looking for work. Every day hundreds of men gather at Kote Sangi; one of the busiest intersections in Kabul. They fill the intersection waiting for work; they pass time talking and joking over cups of tea.      Full news...

IRIN: The financial costs and serious risks faced by Afghan asylum-seekers in making the long and arduous journey to Europe are no real deterrent when the alternatives are seen as poverty and political uncertainty at home, young Afghans told IRIN. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says 26,800 Afghans requested refugee status in 2009 - a 45 percent increase on the year before when 18,500 claims were made.      Full news...

The Washington Post: The number of Afghans who are fleeing their country and seeking political asylum abroad has spiked dramatically during the past two years, a sign that people here are giving up the dream of a peaceful homeland to seek security and employment elsewhere. The increase has coincided with a sharp escalation in U.S. troop levels and has made Afghanistan the world’s top country of origin for asylum seekers worldwide...      Full news...

IRIN: Over 100,000 people have been forced out of their homes by clashes in different parts of Afghanistan over the past 12 months but by no means all of them have received aid, according to aid agencies and affected people. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says civilians are trapped in a difficult environment...      Full news...

Xinhua: "Like the past decades, war once again forced me to leave everything behind and migrate to safer place in Kandahar city," Hamidullah, a 22-year- old from Arghandab district, whispered. Hamidullah, who like many Afghans used only one name is one of hundreds of war-weary villagers who left his home in Arghandab, southern Kandahar province...      Full news...

AFP: Hundreds of families have been displaced by fierce clashes in southern Afghanistan as NATO-led forces fight to eradicate the Taliban from the militants’ heartland, officials said Wednesday. People are fleeing insurgent-infested districts around Kandahar city as Afghan and US-led NATO forces step up military operations against the Taliban, said the director of Kandahar’s refugee department, Mohammad Azim Nawabi.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Afghan people continued to suffer widespread human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law more than seven years after the USA and its allies ousted the Taliban. Access to health care, education and humanitarian aid deteriorated, particularly in the south and south-east of the country, due to escalating armed conflict between Afghan and international forces and the Taliban and other armed groups. Conflict-related violations increased in northern and western Afghanistan, areas previously considered relatively safe.      Full news...

PAN: Hundreds of families, fearing the resumption of clashes between Taliban and security forces, have fled troubled districts of Marja and Nad Ali in southern Helmand province. The fresh exodus of 400 families from the towns comes nearly three months after a massive counterinsurgency operation, involving thousands of Afghan and foreign troops.      Full news...

PAN: High unemployment and deteriorating security is forcing hundreds of Afghan youths to risk an often perilous journey with ruthless smugglers in the search of a better life. Some pay with their lives. Others, such as Sher Rahman, spend thousands of dollars for the journey only to find themselves right back in Afghanistan.      Full news...

The New York Times: Farmers from the district of Marja, which since February has been the focus of the largest American-led military operation in Afghanistan, are fleeing the area, saying that the Taliban are terrorizing the population and that American troops cannot protect the civilians.... Over 150 families have fled Marja in the last two weeks, according to the Afghan Red Crescent Society in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.      Full news...

BBC News: United Nations aid agencies are increasingly concerned about the number of children from Afghanistan migrating across Europe alone. Latest figures from the UN Refugee Agency show that the number of Afghan children under 18 who applied for asylum in Europe last year rose by 64%, from 3,800 to more than 6,000.      Full news...

IRIN: Hundreds of families allegedly forced out of their homes in Kapisa Province, northeastern Afghanistan, by clashes between Taliban insurgents and pro-government Afghan and foreign forces have sought refuge in the eastern outskirts of Kabul. “There is always fighting, bombing and insecurity in Nejrab and Alasaay,” said one displaced man referring to the two Kapisa districts affected. He said he had lost his 15-year-old son in the fighting.      Full news...

IRIN: Dozens of families who lost their homes after earthquakes in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar in April 2009 have moved to an informal settlement for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and called for urgent assistance. Two earthquakes measuring 5.5 and 5.1 on the Richter scale rocked Sherzad and Hesarak districts in Nangarhar Province on 16-17 April, killing 22 people, injuring 59 and destroying 290 houses; 300-600 livestock were also lost and 650 families made homeless, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).      Full news...

UNDP: This year's HDI, which refers to 2007, highlights the very large gaps in well-being and life chances that continue to divide our increasingly interconnected world. The HDI for Afghanistan is 0.352, which gives the country a rank of 181 out of 182 countries. By looking at some of the most fundamental aspects of people’s lives and opportunities the HDI provides a much more complete picture of a country's development than other indicators, such as GDP per capita.      Full news...

IRIN: More than 200,000 Afghans have been expelled from Iran in the past six months, marking a 25 percent increase on the same period in 2008, according to officials. Most of the deportees are single males who had gone to Iran for employment opportunities. Hosting some 900,000 registered Afghan refugees, Iran has deported about one million Afghans considered "illegal migrants" over the past three years, according to aid agencies and government officials.      Full news...

IRIN: Over 1,000 families in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, have opted to return to their home areas in the north and northwest of the country because of worsening insecurity and lack of aid at the camp. Mohammad Azam Nawabi, director of the refugees’ department in Kandahar, told IRIN 1,087 families had formally expressed their desire to return.      Full news...

The Huffington Post: Since 2001, the US Air Force has dropped nearly 31 million pounds (14,049 metric tons) of bombs on Afghanistan. The UN estimates that US airstrikes alone accounted for 64 percent of the 828 Afghan civilians killed last year. Those numbers practically scream the need to abandon conventional warfare tactics in Afghanistan and dramatically shift US foreign policy to incorporate a more humanitarian approach. Instead, we're seeing the horrific images from IDP camps: refugees who have lost loved ones; parents so desperate they would rather sell their children than watch them starve; children scarred both physically and psychologically.      Full news...

Rethink Afghanistan: $100 billion, and for what? To bring more troops to Afghanistan without an exit strategy? To further US foreign policy that fails to address the humanitarian needs of the world’s third poorest country? To escalate military operations that directly result in Afghan civilian casualties?... Fortunately, there are ways to take immediate action and address Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis.      Full news...

IRIN News: Facing unemployment, insecurity and lack of socio-economic opportunities at home, many Afghans, mostly young males, have increasingly resorted to costly and perilous illegal migration to European and other industrialized countries. Over 18,000 Afghan asylum-seekers were registered in 44 industrialized states in 2008 - a significant increase on previous years, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).      Full news...

IRIN: Open defecation, lack of toilets and poor sanitation in makeshift internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Afghanistan are a health threat, particularly to children, health workers and aid agencies say. According to the Afghan government, at least 230,000 people are living in formal IDP camps and informal settlements where few sanitary, water and toilet facilities are available. About 500 families (2,500 individuals) displaced from southern regions have set up shacks, tents and mud huts in Qambar on the western outskirts of Kabul.      Full news...