Explained | Where does India stand on Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban?

Unlike other nations such as the United States, European Union, India has no official refugee policy. India is not a signatory to the 1951 Convention on Refugees or the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Throughout its history post Independence, the country has taken in millions of millions in fits and spurts. This has been true for refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and to a certain degree, even Bhutan.

Till now, refugees from Afghanistan have always been granted entry on a case by case basis. In 2011, the Centre government circulated to all states and Union Territories a Standard Operating Procedure to deal with foreign nationals who claimed to be refugees.

So how are refugees from Afghanistan expected to reach India?

Last week, the government introduced a new electronic visa category called the e-Emergency X-Misc Visa’, which has to be applied for online and will be valid for 6 months. The applications are being processed by a special cell for Afghanistan operating 24x7 inside the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. The visa is provided on a discretionary basis.

At the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India would take in religious minorities from Afghanistan such as Hindus and Sikhs, who number a few hundreds, as it had earlier done. The Ministry of Home Affairs was later reported to have directed that religious minorities be given priority in evacuation requests.

The government has also said that it will ease visa rules for regular Afghans facing violence and will allow more Afghans to come in. However, it has not clarified a fixed policy, nor announced any fixed quotas.

How many refugees from Afghanistan has arrived in India?

The government is yet to disclose the exact number of Afghan refugees who have been granted asylum in the country ever since the latest violence broke out. But sources at the MEA confirm that less than a hundred Afghan refugees have come to India ever since the latest Taliban takeover of the country began.

"Over the past week, the multiple evacuation flights have mostly bought in Indian nationals working at the Indian embassy in Kabul, Indian citizens working in Afghanistan on the many India-funded or led infrastructure projects, media personnel and military, diplomatic assets," a senior MEA official said.

How many Afghan refugees are currently in India?

Afghan community leader Ahmad Zhia Ghani was quoted by media agencies on 23 August as saying that there are currently 21,000 Afghan refugees in India. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) documented 8275 Afghan refugees and 6000 plus asylum seekers in India, under its mandate.

India has been a traditional destination for refugees from Afghanistan over the past 30 years as the nation has struggled through successive bouts of violence. The three main waves of refugees arrived during the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989), the Afghan Civil War (1992-96) and during the Taliban rule (1996-2001).

How many Afghan refugees are there in total?

According to UNHRC data for 2020, the total number of refugees from Afghanistan globally, number roughly 28 lakh. Of this, Pakistan housed the most refugees from Afghanistan at 14.3 lakh, followed by Iran (7.8 lakh) and Germany (1.4 lakh). As of 2020, India had the 12th highest number of Afghan refugees, according to the UNHRC.

Even before the latest crisis, the agency had estimated the violence leading up to the Taliban takeover had made 5.5 lakh people internally displaced in Afghanistan.