Officials from Afghanistan’s first Migrant Resource Center on Tuesday said it has received dozens of calls from people in the country who want to migrate.

Funded by the European Union, the Migrant Resource Center is aimed at tackling issues around illegal migration in the country.

Established under the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR), the new center will also provide legal advice to people looking to leave Afghanistan. The center will be run by a manager and two advisors.

“We are expected to initiate our cooperation with the ministry of labor and social affairs. We are providing information to those who are willing to travel abroad legally in search of work, particularly to Arab countries. Therefore, we brief them about laws and regulations of certain countries where they want to travel,” said Sayed Sher Hussain Honaryar, a coordinator at the center.

“We have printed information packages and booklets which provide information about migration and the conditions for migrants. The information is available in Pashto, Farsi (Persian) and English and everyone can benefit from it,” said Fariha Jabbarkhail, another coordinator at the center.

The management of the center is expected to be overseen by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) and the relevant Afghan government institutions.

After Afghanistan and Pakistan, similar centers are expected to be established in Bangladesh, Iran and Iraq.

Meanwhile, officials from the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation described the initiative as a step towards curbing illegal migration.

“Lack of law is one of the key factors behind illegal migration; therefore, the Migrant Resource Center has been established in Afghanistan. The level of illegal migration will be reduced significantly with the creation of this center,” said Hafiz Miakhail, an advisor to the ministry.

Based on government statistics, in 2017, over 46,000 Afghans sought asylum in European countries. But the figure indicates that the number of Afghans requesting asylum in Europe significantly dropped compared to 2016 when over 200,000 Afghans sought refuge.

The Migrant Resource Center which is run by the Ministry of Refugees and funded by the EU is aimed at providing clear and accessible information to potential migrants on possibilities for orderly migration, rules and regulation.

This comes after the Afghan Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, Sayed Hussain Alemi Balkhi, said last month that more than 300,000 Afghan refugees have returned home in the first five months of this year.

Balkhi said that since the beginning of 2018 more than 900 Afghan migrants returned home voluntarily just from Europe and another 246 were deported.

He said that at the moment more than six million Afghans are living as migrants or refugees in other countries.

Afghanistan Has Second-Largest Refugee Population Globally

The UNHCR in a report released on June 17 said Afghanistan is the source of the second-largest refugee population globally with 2.6 million people having fled by the end of 2017.

The UN Refugee Agency’s annual Global Trends survey found 68.5 million people had been driven from their homes across the world at the end of 2017, more people than the population of Thailand.

Refugees who have fled their countries to escape conflict and persecution accounted for 25.4 million.

This is 2.9 million more than in 2016, also the biggest increase UNHCR has ever seen in a single year.

New displacement is also growing, with 16.2 million people displaced during 2017 itself, either for the first time or repeatedly. That is an average of one person displaced every two seconds, the report stated.

The number of asylum-seekers awaiting the outcome of their applications for refugee status had also risen by about 300,000, to 3.1 million, by the end of December 2017.

People displaced inside their own country accounted for 40 million of the total, slightly fewer than the 40.3 million in 2016.

Large-scale displacement across borders is also less common than the 68 million global displacement figure suggests. Almost two-thirds of those forced to flee are internally displaced people who have not left their own countries.

Two-thirds come from just five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia.