Pakistan: Islamabad: In the months of November and December, UNHCR with the support of other UN agencies and partners arranged activities to mark the 16 Days of Activism campaign.

Pakistan: Karachi: UNHCR handed over blankets, sleeping mates, jerrycans, and plastic sheets to the National Disaster Management Authority for onward distribution to Pakistani communities who were affected by floods and rainfall in Karachi and other parts of the Sindh province. UNHCR also supported Afghan refugees in Karachi.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, welcomes the launch today of a country-wide campaign in Pakistan to verify and update the data of some 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees and to issue them with smart identity cards. The last large-scale verification of refugees in the country was undertaken 10 years ago. Registered refugees will be issued new smartcards with the capacity to hold biometric data. These cards, which will be valid for two years, will also be technologically compatible with systems used in Pakistan to authenticate the identities of nationals to access services.

Document Renewal and Identity Verification Exercise (DRIVE) is taking place across the country. In terms of overall progress, the primary implementation of DRIVE is now approaching 20 per cent and more than a quarter of a million interviews have been completed. To date, a total of 258,815 individuals (49,966 families) have been verified or newly recorded since the launch of DRIVE. A cumulative total of 38,904 PoR cards have been distributed from 34 sites.