KATHMANDU: The UN’s top refugee official arrived in Nepal yesterday for a visit aimed at resolving the fate of around 100,000 refugees from Bhutan stuck in Nepal for 16 years.
“I think there is now a good opportunity for several solutions, and we will make an effort to move forward,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters.
The refugees-mostly ethnic Nepali Hindus-began leaving Bhutan in 1990 when the Buddhist kingdom launched cultural reforms encouraging the use of Bhutan’s language and national dress.
During his three-day visit, Guterres will meet with Nepal’s Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and other government officials before travelling to one of seven UN camps in southeastern Nepal today. He will also visit Bhutan.
The United States has offered to resettle around 60,000 of the refugees, but the move has created tensions in the camps-with many insisting on being allowed to return home.
Bhutan and Nepal have held at least 16 unsuccessful rounds of talks over each other’s responsibility for the refugees.
Meanwhile, the US government’s offer to resettle Bhutanese refugees languishing in Nepal for nearly two decades has triggered eagerness among their peers in India to start a new life on American soil.
According to the US State Department, nearly 15,000-30,000 Bhutanese refugees have been living in India since the 1990s when Bhutanese citizens of Nepali origin were forced to flee their homes following the Druk government’s crackdown on ethnic communities.
Many of those refugees in India were among the poorest in Bhutan and did not have the resources to make it to the refugee camps in Nepal administered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees with donations from the international community.
“All of them live on the margins of society, without citizenship and with no legal status in India,” says a report issued by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) last week.
Officials of the NGO, who visited India in November to compile the report, “Last Hope: The need for durable solutions for Bhutanese refugees in Nepal and India”, say the refugees in India told them they were as much in need of a “durable solution” as those in Nepal.
“I have heard about the US proposal,” one of them told HRW. “If they (refugees in Nepal) go, why not us? Another refugee lamented that the community in India was ignored by the donors. – Agencies
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