Pakistan has decided to close down Afghan refugee camps in tribal districts along the Afghanistan border and move some 60,000 refugees out of the capital by the end of month, the UN said on Saturday.
"In a move to further consolidate the Afghan refugee population... the government in Islamabad has announced its decision to close all camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)," the UN refugee agency said in a statement.
A decision has also been taken to move Afghan refugees now scattered in and around Islamabad, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) added.
Camps in Bajaur and Kurram on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border which are home to over 105,000 Afghan refugees will be closed on August 31, it said.
"The refugees will be offered a choice of voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan or relocation within Pakistan," it said.
The UNHCR said that it "supported" the relocations as clashes between suspected al Qaeda linked militants and security forces had made it "impossible" to assist the refugees properly.
Camps in South Waziristan were closed last year and those in North Waziristan were closed at the end of June.
In Balochistan, one camp was closed in July while another will be emptied by the end of August, the UN body said.
Meanwhile, more than 60,000 Afghan refugees around Islamabad are also set to move. The relocations were ordered more than a year ago, but the Afghan government and elders from the Afghan communities had asked for the move to be postponed, the UNHCR said.
About three million Afghans are still living in Pakistan, more than 25 years after the 1979 Soviet invasion forced them to flee their homeland, a joint Pakistan-UN census found earlier this year.
About 1.3 million Afghans now live in 115 Pakistan refugee camps, mostly along the Afghan border, while 1.7 million live in cities, including the slums outside Islamabad.