A report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) titled, “What are you doing here? Police Abuses against Afghans in Pakistan”, has highlighted the disgraceful and humiliating treatment experienced by the large displaced Afghan population at the hands of the police authorities, in part stemming from an implicit consent sanctioned by the government. According to HRW statistics, as of November 2015 there are 1.5 million registered and about one million undocumented Afghan refugees currently residing in Pakistan. Pakistan has been a host to the refugee population since the 1970s following the Soviet invasion; since then there has been a steady increase in the amount of Afghan citizens seeking asylum from a war-ravaged country that is increasingly socially volatile, politically unstable and economically insecure. The report sheds light on the escalation in knee-jerk hostile attitudes towards Afghans by both the public and the authorities following the attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School (APS) in December 2014, with an ensuing raid, crackdown and intended demolition of Afghan settlements. Moreover, there is an atmosphere of punitive retribution resulting in detention, harassment, extortion and physical violence, systemised as a widespread pattern. To date no evidence has been found connecting the Afghan refugee population to the December 2014 massacre. In truth, although Pakistan has been a ‘gracious’ physical host to the large Afghan refugee population, there is now an unspoken fatigue settling in. Many feel the swarms of asylum seekers have integrated in the Pakistani social fabric so well in terms of thriving businesses and an illegally acquired citizenship that it is difficult and unseemly to single them out for such blatant forms of aggravation. In addition, international donors like the UN High Commissioner for Refugees are now running on a low budget and are not able or fully committed to solving and facilitating the refugee crisis. This decline of genuine interest comes in large part from a discordant and unsympathetic public sentiment constantly riled by terrorism and its adverse consequences, one of the chief reasons why the police can get away with its attitudes and the authorities are not held accountable for endorsed persecution. But like the mass Syrian refugee population waiting at the gates of Europe, it is no fault of common Afghan citizens forced to leave their hearths and homes to seek the fundamental right of living with dignified self-respect. According to the Refugee Convention, no authority can send refugees back without their consent. Despite Pakistan’s scheme of returning Afghan refugees, the government has reconsidered the December 31, 2015 deadline. The HRW report should provide a wake-up call on the state of permanent Afghan presence in the country, and should be solved with a collaborative effort. Pakistan should not just be committed to acting on the long standing refugee crisis taking shape in the country, but should also advocate a more peaceful Afghanistan the displaced can go back to. *