HEADLINE NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Nepal, Bhutan agree to increase ongoing verification pace

BY A STAFF REPORTER

Kathmandu, Aug. 22: Bhutan did not agree to Nepal’s proposal to verify all the Bhutanese refugees in eastern Nepal in a time bound manner but it endorsed the idea of increasing the pace of ongoing verification in one of the refugee camps, Nepalese officials participating at the 11th round of Nepal-Bhutan talks said today.

According to them, the two sides signed a minute in which they agreed to split the present Joint Verification Team — with five members from Nepal and Bhutan each — into two to increase the verification process at the Khudunabari Camp — one of the seven UNHCR-maintained camps in Jhapa and Morang Districts. "That way the remaining refugee families in the Khudunabari Camp would be verified faster," said an official with the Nepalese delegation.

The two Himalayan Kingdoms also agreed to categorise the refugees of the Khudunabari Camp (once they are verified) and at the same time to harmonise their (the nations’) positions on the categorization. "These things will happen simultaneously," Jigme Y Thinley, Bhutanese Foreign Minister, told this daily over the phone from Thimpu. "The categorization is the integral part of the verification."

Notably, Thinley also said that the categorised refugees of the Khudunabari camp, after the harmonisation of the two nation’s stands, would be repatriated. "But, the repatriation does not mean that all the refugees will go back since they will belong to certain categories which may not be acceptable to us."

Thinley, however, did not clarify what category would Bhutan be taking back. "This has been quite clear to everybody and we believe we can negotiate with the Nepalese side on this."

Nepal and Bhutan still have striking difference on their stand to treat the four categories of refugees who claim that the Bhutanese government shooed them out of their homelands due to its ethnic cleansing campaign. While Bhutan insists that these Nepali-speaking Bhutanese from its southern part were illegal economic migrants. The Dragon Kingdom has been asserting that it would take back only the first category refugees — Bonafide Bhutanese, while Nepal has been maintaining that the Druk Yul should take back all the refugees except the non-Bhutanese category.

It was on this particular difference, the two nations tried to harmonise their positions until the mid 90’s. And it was the same difference that stone-walled the talks after the sixth round of bilateral meeting in 1996.

At the 11th round of talks in Thimpu this time, the Nepalese side had highly prioritized the speedy verification of the refugees considering the exceptionally slow performance of the Joint Verification Team that has been identifying the refugees of the Khudunabari Camp for the last four months (it has been stopped temporarily, though).

The JVT have identified hardly 900 families of the camp while there are more than 15,000 families totaling to 100,000 refugees in the UNHCR-maintained camps in Jhapa and Morang Districts. Modest estimations show the JVT would need at least five years to verify all the refugees, given their present pace.

The ministerial level Nepal-Bhutan talks on Bhutanese refugees began in 1993 in Thimpu when the two nations agreed to categorize the Bhutanese refugees. The last time they met was last year here when they decided to verify the refugees, to begin with in one of the refugee camps.

Most of these talks took place at foreign ministerial level — like the latest one. This time around, Nepal took part in the foreign ministerial level talk even as there was no separate minister in the cabinet holding the foreign affairs portfolio. Since Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba himself is looking after the Foreign Ministry and due to his portfolio he cannot sit with the Bhutanese Foreign Minister for the bilateral talks, the government assigned Finance Minister Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat to take part in the Foreign Ministerial talks this time.

The 11th round of talks had begun last Monday and the Nepalese delegation team would return home tomorrow.

Other Stories