Afghan Refugee Rights and National Sovereignty: Pakistan’s Border As A Human Rights Frontier (2023-2025)
Date Published : 4 June 2026
Contributors
Firdoos Khan
Department of Law, Universitas Islam Indonesia, Indonesia
Author
Salsabila Raisha Meshanayagi
Department of Law, Universitas Islam Indonesia, Indonesia
Author
Proceeding
Track
General Track
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Firdoos Khan; Salsabila Raisha Meshanayagi;
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This research shows how Pakistan has deported 1,088,133 Afghan refugees from Pakistan (2023-2025) while also hosting 3.7 million. The research focuses on the apparent contradiction of Pakistan’s adherence to the legal principle of non-refoulement and border control sovereignty. The research employs qualitative legal analysis, including Pakistan’s Constitutional Law, international treaties, the ruling of the court case Rahil Azizi v The State, and various international sources from UNHCR and IOM, and theories of securitisation. The research concludes that Pakistan employs security discourses and the fact that it is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention as a means to avoid an individualised assessment of possible deported persons. Through this, Pakistan can mass deport refugees under the guise of complying with legal statutes and creating a legal frontier that protects its borders. The study demonstrates that deportation of certain at-risk groups in plural, i.e. women, stateless children, former officials who are at risk of Taliban persecution, deportation of such groups constitutes a return to legal risk and therefore legal protections become useless without enforcement mechanisms that include aid conditionality and strengthened judicial interstate mechanisms.
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How to Cite
Firdoos Khan, F. K., & Salsabila Raisha Meshanayagi, S. R. M. (2026). Afghan Refugee Rights and National Sovereignty: Pakistan’s Border As A Human Rights Frontier (2023-2025). Lex Recente: Proceedings of the International Conference on Contemporary Law, 2(1), 1-12. https://conference.uii.ac.id/isc/paper/view/664