A Medical Council as an Instrument of Repatriation: The PMDC's Order on Afghan Students

Overview

On 31 July 2026, and again in a letter dated 1 September, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) instructed every medical and dental college in the country to stop admitting Afghan nationals and to send home the Afghan students already enrolled. At King Edward Medical University in Lahore, 20 students, seven of them in their final year, were given 24 hours to begin the administrative process for departure. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) estimates the order affects around 100 students in Lahore alone, 20 to 40 of them women, and has called on the government to apply the principle of non-refoulement before any student is returned.

This commentary sets out what the PMDC ordered, the legal footing it rests on, the gender-specific harm built into a blanket instruction, and what it means that a professional licensing body, rather than a court or an immigration authority, is the one carrying out this policy. It argues that the choice of instrument matters as much as the policy itself. Routing a security decision through an accreditation power removes the individualized review that Pakistan's own international obligations require, and puts colleges in the position of enforcing an outcome their regulator was never built to adjudicate.