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Islamabad: More than half the survivors still living in refugee camps since last year's killer South Asian earthquake can't go home because they don't have land to return to, according to a new UN-backed survey that underlines one of the last hurdles facing recovery efforts.
Landslides or floods simply washed away the places where most of the 35,000 remaining refugees had lived, while others can't return because of medical problems, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) study showed.
"The majority of them don't own land because of landslides or because the area was swept away," IOM official Saleem Rehmat said yesterday, adding that finding permanent housing will "be a long process".
More than 80,000 people were killed and another 3.5 million left homeless when the massive 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck northern Pakistan and India on October 8, 2005.
While aid efforts have been praised for their quick response to the disaster, thousands still living in refugee camps pose a lingering challenge.
About 29,000 of the 35,000 people surveyed were still living in 44 camps scattered across the Pakistani administered side of Kashmir, the mountainous region most devastated by the quake.
The IOM study, released on Tuesday, was conducted with the backing of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and local governments in Pakistan.
Its results suggest the next step should be verifying landless claims and finding new land for victims, Rehmat said.
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