The section for refugees at the office for the Society for Human Rights and Prisoners’ Aid (SHARP) is bustling with men and women of all ages. They are mostly of the Hazara ethnicity. Today, a UNHCR representative is here to hear the cases of the refugees and decide if they will be allowed asylum in Pakistan. While we wait for her to speak to us, we sit down with Abdul Mateen, a SHARP employee for a chat.

 “There are people here from Attock, Pindi, Islamabad’s G-9 sector and the Baloch Colony. There are two inquiries in a month; one is the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) inquiry, which is today and the other is RST or resettlement inquiry. Resettlement is closed for Afghanis now, meaning they cannot resettle to a foreign country. So mainly our work is to try and give these people asylum in Pakistan,” Mateen says.

SHARP has been running since 1999, and their primary function is to assist UNHCR in registration of asylum seekers and providing them legal aid. The building is behind the furniture shops on Golra and the office occupies a small area. Between the door to the office and the gate is a section barred by a fence where the refugees sit and wait to meet the UNHCR representative. It is clearly a busy day today and we are repeatedly told that we might not get to speak the UNHCR representative.  

Mateen excuses us and rushes out his office. There are raised voices outside, and someone is screaming in Farsi. Mateen returns to the office with a slip and a solemn face. “Someone has been screened out. I don’t know how I am going to explain this,” he says with a sad smile. Screened out means the applicant has been rejected from the process of seeking asylum. Once the applicant has been screened out, they cannot apply again.

He enters the data into an excel sheet and keeps looking at the slip. He sighs and leaves the office to explain to the family what has happened.

A while later, a woman enters the room. Her name is Samina Taj, and she is working as a Field Associate in the Field Unit of UNHCR, Islamabad. Her job as a UNHCR representative is to see screen refugees and see if the fit the UN mandate before granting them asylum in Pakistan.

She looks tired. We ask her about the family that has been screened out. “Days like this remind me that how difficult this work is. I have to think like a policy and not a human. Everyone starts crying when they hear the decision and if we cry with them, what about the hundreds of people waiting outside? We have to work without emotions,” Taj says.

“We understand their problems because we are working with them directly. The process of seeking asylum is extremely transparent and there is no space for any unfair practice. We ensure there is no issue at our end. I have seen and spoken to so many refugees now, I can tell in a second whether what they are saying is true or not,” she says. She was previously stationed at the VRC center in Peshawar where returning refugees deposit their POR cards and other documents. “We have an iris recognition system there which nobody can cheat,” she says.

“There is so much humiliation the refugees have to face that they are living in constant fear. The police does not lose any chance to bully these groups,” Samina says. UNHCR and Sharp are currently carrying out an awareness campaign for refugee rights at the Police Line Headquarters in H-11, Islamabad. “When the POR expiry was March 31, the police were packing up people in trucks and forcing them out of their homes. We used to get hundreds of calls on our helpline. There are times I have spoken to police myself, asking them to not hurt or harm the family. It’s truly tragic what the police does to them,” she says.

We ask her about what she feels about the negative mindset people have about Afghanis. A lot of people we spoke to about our project were supporting the repatriation project, claiming the Afghan refugees are responsible for bringing drugs and weapons to the country. “They come carrying nothing at all and their lives are so unstable, they can hardly fend for themselves. It’s feudalism that is at the core of the weapon culture. The refugees are an easy target to blame. Ask a village Chaudhry who is always armed and who murders whoever he pleases, did an Afghan refugee get him his gun and immunity from the law? Or was it his money and power?” Samina says.

We ask her if there is a chance that the deadline will be extended on December 31, 2017 or will it be final? “Of course it will get extended. The borders are closed in December because of the snow,” she says, shaking her head. “I wish I could go scream at the Pakistani government and tell them to decide for once what they want! They do not know the process and the struggle behind the repatriation project. This is not a joke. This is someone’s life; somebody who struggled so hard to make a living for themselves. Whenever you please, you set a deadline for their stay. And then whenever you please, you extend the deadline,” Samina says. “I wish they could see what kind of horrible lives these people lead. Some of them live in worse conditions than a street dog. And they are blamed for terrorism,” she says.

Outside the office, applicants are now leaving. Some are carrying documents and papers, some are carrying new born children, some are empty handed; but everyone is carrying similar expressions. The confused look of lost child which settles oddly on faces of old men and women. Dropped shoulders and faces etched with worry. These are the lives of the 0.6 million undocumented Afghanis in Pakistan. A life full of uncertainty and no place to call home, their fates resting in the hands of politicians who lack insight into their problems. Fear and insecurity, which is driving young children to make dangerous journeys across land and sea to safer places.

Many Pakistanis we spoke to about the repatriation decision said that the Afghans are drug and weapon suppliers who are ungrateful to Pakistanis so they should be “sent back.” It’s easy to use the term “send back” like describing a clothing item with a return policy which you can “send back” to the store. That they are humans and a people who deserve peace and security as much as we do, is something that gets lost behind government policy and political agendas. Donald Trump’s strict no refugee policy and racist remarks sparked intense fury from the same people who support the forceful repatriation of Afghan refugees and make racist remarks about them. Maybe it’s not just police that needs an awareness on refugee rights, but the whole of the country.