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Six months into capturing crucial information on mobility dynamics at Afghanistan's borders, IOM DTM Afghanistan has produced and interactive Story Map to visualize data from January to June 2024. Click through to see mobility pathways to and from assessed crossing points and how return trends evolved month-by-month.
OVERVIEW
For decades, Afghanistan has experienced significant movement across its borders with neighboring countries the Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan. This movement, influenced by cultural, geographic, economic, and security factors, has played a crucial role in shaping regional dynamics and fostering ties between these countries. In late 2023, policies and statements by officials in both the Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan called for the expulsion of undocumented foreigners, the majority of whom are Afghan nationals, leading to impacts regarding movements to Afghanistan. In response to these recent movements, IOM Afghanistan re-launched its DTM Flow Monitoring (FM) activity at the beginning of 2024 to provide critical insights into current mobility dynamics at Afghanistan’s borders. Flow Monitoring is designed to track the scale and characteristics of human mobility along the borders, including volume, intended destinations, reasons for movement, and intended lengths of stay. DTM currently operates at four main crossing points (connected to Afghanistan’s National Highway) as well as five other crossing points with Islamic Republic of Iran and Pakistan.
As of the end of June 2024, DTM has counted 1,429,710 individuals entering Afghanistan and 942,174 leaving Afghanistan from the ten assessed border crossing points. Flows include both shorter-term circular movements, which often involve people conducting trade, having a health appointment, or visiting family, as well as longer-term movements, which are often influenced by economic reasons, safety reasons, family reasons, or shifting migration policies in neighboring countries, such as the Islamic of Iran and Pakistan’s recent policies targeting Afghan nationals. This story map provides visualizations on inflow and outflow pathways in Afghanistan as well as the presence of returnees, combining both Flow Monitoring data from DTM Afghanistan and registration data from IOM Afghanistan’s Cross Border Post-Arrival Humanitarian Assistance (CB-PAHA) program. In addition to this story map, DTM provides more information on weekly flow trends in its Weekly Snapshot, in-depth Flow Monitoring analysis in its quarterly report, “Mobility Dynamics at Afghanistan’s Borders,” and interactive data viewing in its Flow Monitoring dashboard, all of which can be found here on the DTM Afghanistan website .