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Refugees: Afghanistan

Question for Home Office

UIN HL2169, tabled on 5 September 2022

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many persons have been accepted to date in the UK under the Afghanistan Citizens Resettlement Scheme.

Answered on

21 September 2022

The Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) will see up to 20,000 people from Afghanistan and the region resettled to the UK, over the coming years.

Under pathway one of the ACRS, individuals being resettled will be some of those already evacuated and in the UK. They include women’s rights activists, journalists, and prosecutors, and Afghan family members of British Nationals.

At 12 Aug 2022, the UK has welcomed 21,450 people to the UK from Afghanistan - or a neighbouring country - since June 2021. However, we are unable, at this time, to provide a breakdown of how many people have been granted resettlement specifically under the ACRS.

Officials are working at pace to assure information relating to the individuals resettling in the UK under the ACRS on case working systems. Once this work concludes, the Home Office will include Afghan resettlement statistics in its quarterly Immigration Statistics publications.

Until then the factsheet will be updated every quarter – with the next iteration scheduled for publication on 24 November 2022.

We have now begun to receive the first referrals for resettlement under pathway 2 of the ACRS – which opened in June - from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We anticipate receiving referrals from the UNHCR for up to 2,000 refugees, who have already fled Afghanistan, during the first year of this pathway - although this number will be kept under review - and we look forward to welcoming the first new arrivals under this pathway in due course.

Finally, the FCDO also launched a third referral pathway, in June, which will see up to 1,500 eligible British Council and GardaWorld contractors, Chevening alumni - and their dependents - in Afghanistan, considered for resettlement to the UK.

The window for expressions of interest (EOIs) to resettle under the ACRS pathway 3 closed on 15 August 2022. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office is in the process of reviewing all EOIs in the order in which they were received.

Answered by

Home Office