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NEW YORK CITY: With more than 1.6 million Afghans returning to their home country from Iran and Pakistan so far this year, the UN Refugee Agency warned on Thursday that the scale and intensity of the mass returns are creating a humanitarian emergency in a country already gripped by poverty, drought and insecurity.

Arafat Jamal, UNHCR’s representative in Afghanistan, on Friday described the situation as “evolving and chaotic,” as he urged countries in the region and the wider international community to urgently commit resources, show restraint and coordinate their efforts to avoid further destabilization of Afghanistan and the region.

“We are calling for restraint, for resources, for dialogue and international cooperation,” he said.

“Handled with calm, foresight and compassion, returns can be a force for stability. Handled haphazardly, they will lead to instability, unrest and onward movements.”

According to UNHCR figures, more than 1.3 million people have returned from Iran alone since the start of this year, many of them under coercive or involuntary circumstances.

In recent days, arrivals at the Islam Qala crossing on the border with Iran have peaked at more than 40,000 people a day, with a high of 50,000 recorded on July 4.

Jamal warned that many of the returnees, often born abroad and unfamiliar with Afghanistan, arrive “tired, disoriented, brutalized and often in despair.” He raised particular concern about the fate of women and girls who arrive in a country where their fundamental rights are severely restricted.

Iran has signaled its intention to expel as many as 4 million Afghans, a move UNHCR predicts could double the number of returnees by the end of the year. Jamal said the agency is now preparing for up to 3 million arrivals this year. Afghanistan remains ill-equipped to absorb such large numbers.

“This is precarity layered upon poverty, on drought, on human-rights abuses, and on an unstable region,” Jamal said, citing a UN Development Programme report that found 70 percent of

Afghans live at subsistence levels, and a recent drought alert from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

UNHCR’s humanitarian response is severely underfunded, with just 28 percent of its operations financed so far this year. Jamal described agonizing decisions being made in the field, including reductions of food rations and other aid supplies: “Should we give one blanket instead of four to a family? One meal instead of three?”

Despite the strained resources, Jamal said the agency is still providing emergency food and water, shelter and transportation at reception centers, and working with partners such as UNICEF to address the needs of unaccompanied children, about 400 of whom were reportedly deported from Iran in just over two weeks.

Pressed on how the UN can support peace and development in a country where women face widespread discrimination, and access to education and healthcare is limited, Jamal acknowledged the severe challenges but defended the organization’s continued engagement.

“Yes, this is the worst country in the world for women’s rights,” he said. “Yet with adequate funding, the UN is able to reach women. We’ve built women-only markets, trained midwives, and supported women entrepreneurs.

“We must invest in the people of Afghanistan, even in these grim circumstances.”

He added that the Taliban, despite their own restrictions and resource constraints, have so far welcomed the returnees and facilitated UN operations at the border.

UNHCR is now appealing for a coordinated regional strategy and renewed donor support. Jamal highlighted positive examples of regional cooperation, such as trade initiatives by Uzbekistan, as potential models for this.

He also welcomed a recent UN General Assembly resolution calling for the voluntary, safe and dignified return of refugees, and increased international collaboration on the issue.

“Billions have been wasted on war,” he said. “Now is the time to invest in peace.”

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Thousands of people from Bosnia and around the world gathered in Srebrenica to mark the 30th anniversary of a massacre there of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim boys and men — an atrocity that has been acknowledged as Europe’s only genocide after the Holocaust.

Seven newly identified victims of the 1995 massacre, including two 19-year-old men, were laid to rest in a collective funeral at a vast cemetery near Srebrenica Friday, next to more than 6,000 victims already buried there. Such funerals are held annually for the victims who are still being unearthed from dozens of mass graves around the town.

Relatives of the victims, however, often can bury only partial remains of their loved ones as they are typically found in several different mass graves, sometimes kilometers (miles) apart. Such was the case of Mirzeta Karic, who was waiting to bury her father.

“Thirty years of search and we are burying a bone,” she said, crying by her father’s coffin which was wrapped in green cloth in accordance with Islamic tradition.

“I think it would be easier if I could bury all of him. What can I tell you, my father is one of the 50 (killed) from my entire family,” she added.

July 11, 1995, is the day when the killings started after Bosnian Serb fighters overran the eastern Bosnian enclave in the final months of the interethnic war in the Balkan country.

After taking control of the town that was a protected UN safe zone during the war, Bosnian Serb fighters separated Bosniak Muslim men and boys from their families and brutally executed them in just several days. The bodies were then dumped in mass graves around Srebrenica which they later dug up with bulldozers, scattering the remains among other burial sites to hide the evidence of their war crimes.

The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide on the July 11 anniversary.

Scores of international officials and dignitaries attended the commemoration ceremonies and the funeral. Among them were European Council President Antonio Costa and Britain’s Duchess of Edinburgh, Sophie, who said that “our duty must be to remember all those lost so tragically and to never let these things happen again.”

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said he felt “humbled” because UN troops from the Netherlands were based in Srebrenica when Bosnian Serbs stormed the town.

“I see to what extent commemorating Srebrenica genocide is important,” he said.

In an emotional speech, Munira Subasic, who heads the Mothers of Srebrenica association, urged Europe and the world to “help us fight against hatred, against injustice and against killings.”

Subasic, who lost her husband and youngest son in Srebrenica along with more than 20 relatives, told Europe to “wake up.”

“As I stand here many mothers in Ukraine and Palestine are going through what we went through in 1995,” Subasic said, referring to ongoing conflicts. “It’s the 21st century but instead of justice, fascism has woken up.”

On the eve of the anniversary, an exhibition was inaugurated displaying personal items belonging to the victims that were found in the mass graves over the years.

The conflict in Bosnia erupted in 1992, when Bosnian Serbs took up arms in a rebellion against the country’s independence from the former Yugoslavia and with an aim to create their own state and eventually unite with neighboring Serbia. More than 100,000 people were killed and millions displaced before a US-brokered peace agreement was reached in 1995.

Bosnia remains ethnically split while both Bosnian Serbs and neighboring Serbia refuse to acknowledge that the massacre in Srebrenica was a genocide despite rulings by two UN courts. Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, along with many others, were convicted and sentenced for genocide.

Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic expressed condolences on X while calling the Srebrenica massacre a “terrible crime.”

“There is no room in Europe — or anywhere else — for genocide denial, revisionism, or the glorification of those responsible,” European Council President Costa said in his speech. “Denying such horrors only poisons our future.”