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India: Whether a community of Afghan refugees not registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is residing in the city of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh province (January 1993 - October 2004)

The following information was provided by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in New Delhi, India, and was forwarded to the Research Directorate by the UNHCR office in Ottawa:

[t]he [UNHCR] office [in New Delhi] is unaware of an Afghan community, registered or unregistered, living in Shimla, however some individual ethnic Afghans have been known to travel and stay in Himachal Pradesh [province] of which Shimla is the capital. Himachal Pradesh is situated in the Himalayas and its weather is an attraction for the Afghans as the North Indian plains tend to get very hot in the summer.

... [F]or your info there is a large Kashmiri community in Himachal Pradesh who fled from the Kashmir valley due to [the] insecure situation there. They work mostly as traders and porters. We have known of individual Afghan cases who have chosen to live in Himachal due to the presence of the Kashmiris who look similar to the Afghans (20 Oct. 2004).

Additional and/or corroborating information on whether a community of Afghan refugees not registered with the UNHCR is residing in Shimla could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of additional sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Reference

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), New Delhi. 20 October 2004. Correspondence forwarded by the UNHCR office in Ottawa.

Additional Sources Consulted

Internet sites, including: Amnesty International (AI), BBC, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2003, European Country of Origin Information Network (ECOI), Freedom in the World 2004, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), ReliefWeb, The Tribune, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), World News Connection (WNC).