South Asia State of Minorities Report 2019 them the status of second-class citizens in comparison to Muslims. Taken together with other laws, the constitution works to sustain the place of Muslims as higher than the others. Since 1986 when an amendment to the Blasphemy Law made the punishment for insulting the Prophet Muhammad equivalent to ‘death or imprisonment for life’, 776 Muslims, 505 Ahmadiyas, 229 Christians and 30 Hindus have been accused of various forms of blasphemy between 1987 and 2018. The law has been criticised by legal experts for being weak and vague, allowing many to take advantage of it to launch false accusations and malign others for the sake of personal vendettas. While there has been a stronger opposition to the blasphemy law and celebrities and renowned members of the civil society have taken a stance against persecution of minorities, the religious lobby remains just as strong, thwarting any meaningful dissent that call for an amendment or abolishing of the law. Information regarding Afghan refugees is inevitably limited, since official statistics only trace the reported numbers of registered refugees, and there is a large number that remains unregistered. According to the UNHCR, there are 1,416,078 registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan; 68 per cent of them live in urban areas of the country, the remaining 32 per cent in Refugee Villages (RVs) in the rural areas of the country. The general institutional response to the Afghan refugees’ plight has been poor. A recent ruling by the Peshawar High Court called for the restriction of activities by the Afghan refugees, including limitation on their ability to conduct businesses. Afghans conducting trade face special disadvantages, with additional checks and procedures levied on their import and export activities. Aside from these restrictive visa regimes, tariff barriers, customs regulations and administrative hindrances, Afghans face a receding space for economic activity and increasingly, unequal access to opportunities. Most issues are discounted by administrative authorities as the government continues to endorse the voluntary repatriation programme for the Afghan refugees. The initial deadline for repatriation (30 June 2019) was recently extended by a year. Current data estimates show that the UNHCR has facilitated the voluntary repatriation of 4,374,208 Afghan refugees from 2002 till December 2018. Around 5,500 xlii