Coming Back: The Health and Wellbeing of Young Returnees

AYP Committee Brief 2026/03 · Committee on Health & Migration

Desk-research brief · Published November 2026
Afghanistan Youth Parliament (AYP) – Think Tank Center

About this brief: a desk-research brief prepared by the AYP Think Tank Center for the Committee on Health & Migration. It rests only on published sources and is not a record of any meeting or committee decision. Review: internal desk review, November 2026 · Funding: none · Partners: none · Data: published secondary sources · Corrections: none to date. Not peer-reviewed.

Summary

Afghanistan has absorbed one of the largest return movements of recent decades, at the same moment as its health system lost funding and hundreds of clinics. Young returnees arrive with debt, missing documents and interrupted lives, and often into communities that are themselves struggling. Their physical needs are visible at the border; their mental health needs are much less visible and far less served. AYP and its partners cannot replace health services, but they can help young returnees find services, reduce isolation, and keep the issue on the agenda of those who fund care.

UNHCR estimates that about 2.9 million people returned or were deported to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan in 2025 (UNHCR, 2026). UNDP counts nearly five million returns since 2023 (UNDP, 2026). The movement continued in 2026: from 1 January to 1 August, about 426,700 people returned from Iran alone (UNHCR and IOM, 2026), and by October WFP reported that more than 1.2 million Afghans had been forced home from Iran and Pakistan during the year (WFP, 2026). Many arrived with very little. UNDP found that 92% of recent returnees cannot secure basic necessities, compared with 74% of the population as a whole (UNDP, 2026).

Key facts

Health services shrank as needs grew. WHO estimates that 14.4 million people need health assistance in 2026. More than 422 health facilities closed in 2025 because of reduced humanitarian funding, limiting access to essential care for an estimated three million people (WHO, 2026). UNDP reports that the share of people unable to access health care rose from 16% in 2024 to 23% in 2025 (UNDP, 2026).
Border care is real but thin. Between April and early July 2025, more than 836,000 people crossed back through official border points. WHO and partners provided basic health services to more than 84,000 people, screened over 394,000 for illness and gave 198,000 vaccine doses. WHO named mental health and psychosocial support among the most pressing unmet needs (WHO, 2025).
Debt and papers. Of returnee households surveyed by UNHCR, 88% were in debt and more than half lacked essential civil documents (UNHCR, 2025). Without documents, access to services, work and property becomes harder.
A young and family-based population. Returnees are about half women and girls and more than half children (BICC, 2025).
Lost access abroad before return. Researchers note that returnee families faced barriers to health care before leaving, especially after undocumented Afghans in Iran were barred from essential services in March 2025 (BICC, 2025).

What it means for young people

For a young returnee, the first months combine several kinds of loss at once: income, friends, a familiar city, sometimes schooling, and often a sense of control over one’s own life. Many grew up abroad and know Afghanistan mainly through family stories. Some return with injuries or untreated illness; others carry the stress of arrest, deportation or family separation.

Research on refugees in many countries shows higher rates of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress than in host populations, often lasting for years (Daliparthy, Sharif and Razai, 2026). The same review protocol points out how little evidence exists on Afghan returnees specifically. That gap matters. When a problem is not measured, it is rarely funded.

Young women returnees face extra barriers: restrictions on movement and work limit the support they can reach, and the shortage of women health workers makes care harder to find. Young men face pressure to become earners immediately, often in insecure day labour, which leaves little room to recover.

There is also a quieter risk. Long periods without work, study or purpose, the “waithood” described in another brief in this series, can feed isolation and hopelessness (BICC, 2025). Social connection is not a luxury here; it is part of health.

Practical options for AYP and partners

Help young returnees find the services that exist. Many do not know which clinics still function, which organisations provide documents or legal help, or where mental health support is available. AYP can maintain a simple, regularly checked referral list by province, shared through its channels, with clear dates and no personal data.
Train volunteers in psychological first aid. WHO’s guide for field workers explains how non-specialists can offer basic, humane support after distressing events: listen, link people to services and avoid harm (WHO, 2011). It is not therapy and must never be presented as such, but it can help AYP volunteers respond well and know when to refer.
Create peer circles for young returnees. Small online or phone-based groups, moderated by trained volunteers, can reduce isolation and share practical knowledge: how to get documents, find work or continue studies. Women-only groups should be led by women.
Connect health with livelihoods and learning. A young person who can study or earn recovers faster. Referral should include AYP’s free courses, the mentorship network and the skills-recognition ideas in Committee Brief 2026/01.
Make the evidence gap visible. AYP’s youth survey can include a small, carefully designed set of wellbeing questions for returnees, with a strict do-no-harm review, anonymous answers and referral information on every screen.
For donors and health partners: protect funding for primary care and mental health services in high-return provinces, include returnees and host communities together, and fund women health workers wherever possible.

Next steps and questions for discussion

The options above raise questions that AYP’s committee and Think Tank can take forward openly once representatives are in place.

Which provinces receive the most young returnees, and where are the gaps between need and services widest? Published UNHCR and IOM return figures and WHO service updates are the starting point.
What do young returnees themselves say they need most in their first six months: documents, work, housing, study or someone to talk to? A short, anonymous module in the AYP youth survey could ask this, with referral information attached.
How can AYP volunteers abroad, many of whom once lived as refugees themselves, share practical knowledge without giving advice beyond their competence?
Which existing organisations provide psychosocial support in Farsi-e-Dari and Pashto, and how can AYP refer young people to them safely?
How can women volunteers be supported to lead women-only groups, given restrictions on movement and work?

AYP treats these as open research questions, not as conclusions. Any data collection will follow the Research Standards: voluntary and anonymous participation, a do-no-harm check before any question is asked, and results reported only in aggregate.

Limitations

Most data come from humanitarian monitoring and agency surveys. Figures for returns differ between sources and periods; we report each figure with its source and dates. There are few published studies of the mental health of Afghan returnees, so this brief draws on wider research on refugees, which may not transfer directly.

References

BICC – Mielke, K., Schmeidl, S. and Schetter, C. (2025). Responding to Mass Returns in Afghanistan. Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies. bicc.de
Daliparthy, S., Sharif, F. and Razai, M. S. (2026). Protocol for a systematic review of mental healthcare for Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in high-income countries. BMJ Open, 16(6), e118502. bmjopen.bmj.com
UNDP (2026). Afghanistan Socioeconomic Review, released 13 May 2026; summarised in UN News. news.un.org
UNHCR (2025). Afghanistan post-return monitoring survey report, December 2025. data.unhcr.org
UNHCR (2026). Global Report 2025: Afghanistan situation overview. unhcr.org
UNHCR and IOM (2026). Iran–Afghanistan Returns Emergency Response, Update 32, 1 August 2026. ecoi.net
WFP (2026). Food insecurity and child malnutrition worsen in Afghanistan despite strong agricultural season. News release, October 2026. wfp.org
WHO (2011). Psychological first aid: Guide for field workers. WHO, War Trauma Foundation and World Vision International. who.int
WHO (2025). WHO calls for urgent support to meet the health needs of record numbers of women and children at Afghanistan’s borders, 8 July 2025. emro.who.int
WHO (2026). Afghanistan: WHO Health Emergency Appeal 2026. reliefweb.int

Afghanistan Youth Parliament (AYP) – Think Tank Center
AYP Committee Brief 2026/03 – November 2026
Corrections and comments: [email protected]