Fair Solution to Bhutanese Refugee Issues

By Bipin Adhikari

The world celebrated this year's World Refugee Day on June 20. This Day is dedicated to millions of people whose futures have been jeopardised by war, persecution and exile. In his speech on the occasion, the High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, said that refugee's life is never an easy one, but it's especially tough on young people who are robbed of what should be the most formative, promising and exciting years of their lives. At a time when they should be full of hope and dreams for the future, they are instead faced with the harsh reality of displacement and deprivation.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that at the beginning of 2003, there were an estimated 10.3 million refugees worldwide, a decrease of 1.7 million compared to a year earlier. But the total population of concern to UNHCR, including refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs) as well as those who returned during the year, increased slightly from 19.8 million in early 2002 to some 20.5 million in early 2003. In this context, the life of more than 100,000 refugees of ethnic Nepalese origin from southern Bhutan seems to be without hope even after years of their efforts to go back to their native land as dignified citizens.

The Bhutanese refugees have been living in camps in southeast Nepal for about a dozen years. Everybody feels bothered about these victims of  ethnic cleansing except the Government of India which has used its enormous political power to maintain the status quo in favour of its strategic interests. These victims of ethnic cleansing were, after they were arbitrarily stripped of their nationality, forced to go to Nepal through the Indian territory with the help of local civil administration. India thus has its share of responsibility to the issue. Without its full-fledged commitment, the question of repatriation of the refugees seems unlikely in the current scheme of things.† Everybody knows that according to a 1949 treaty of friendship between India and Bhutan, the government of Bhutan agrees to be guided by the advice of the government of India with regard to its external affairs. The Indian side, which decides almost everything in Bhutan, pretends that it honours Bhutanís independence of action on this issue.

If refugee situations drag on like this for years with no political solution in sight, the danger of security problems that it might generate in future should not be minimized. The June 18 announcement by the Governments of Bhutan and Nepal that only a handful of Bhutanese refugees would be allowed to return to their country with full citizenship rights could render tens of thousands of refugees stateless. They issued the results of a pilot verification process in one camp that divided the 12,000 refugees into four categories:

Two and a half per cent of the refugees (only 293 people) in Category I: bona fide Bhutanese citizens who would be eligible for repatriation to Bhutan;

Seventy per cent in Category II: refugees who "voluntarily emigrated'' from Bhutan and would be required to reapply for Bhutanese citizenship. The process they would need to follow to reclaim their citizenship, land and property remains unclear and may be decided in talks between the governments in August;

Twenty-four per cent in Category III: non-Bhutanese people whose claims to citizenship were rejected and would be returned to their respective countries;

Three per cent in Category IV: so-called `criminals' who would be liable to be tried in the Bhutanese courts.

According to the announcement, the refugees will have just 15 days to appeal their categorisation in a screening process that the Governments of Nepal and Bhutan have been conducting since March 2001. This is a real tragedy.

In a joint statement, the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Lutheran World Federation, Refugees International, the U.S. Committee for Refugees, and the Bhutanese Refugee Support Group, called on donor Governments and Governments in the region to increase pressure on the Governments of Bhutan and Nepal to find a just and fair solution to this long-standing refugee crisis. They say the move would leave most of the 100,000 refugees stateless. More than 70% were dubbed voluntary migrants whose repatriation would depend on whether the Bhutanese government renewed their citizenship. Bhutan had earlier refused to take them back, saying they had already forfeited citizenship by leaving the country voluntarily. They described the verification process as a violation of human rights and urged international donors to reject it. Many other critics said that the verification process and its results heavily favoured Bhutan and international groups appear to share that view.

The Bhutanese refugee situation has become one of the most protracted and neglected refugee crises in the world. While humanitarian involvement can help to ease the hard lot of refugees, it can never be a substitute for serious and sustained efforts to send all refugees back home and find solutions for the problems that force people to become refugee.

Adhikari is a lawyer