UN floats Bhutanese refugee plan

By Navin Singh Khadka
BBC Nepali service

About 100,000 refugees from Bhutan live in camps in Nepal

The United Nations refugee agency has said efforts are underway to resettle some of the Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal in Western countries.

In an interview with the BBC Nepali service, the agency's Nepal chief did not specify the countries involved.

Abraham Abraham also said Nepal was at the moment unwilling to consider resettlement to third countries.

Nepal and Bhutan have held 15 rounds of talks since the early 1990s, when the refugees first entered Nepal.

It is believed to be the first time a UN official has publicly raised the possibility of resettling Bhutanese refugees in countries other than Bhutan.

Inconclusive talks

Mr Abraham said his office was in the process of re-registering more than 100,000 refugees in UNHCR-supported camps in western Nepal.

The process could help recipient countries with refugee resettlement, he said.

But he said Nepal would only consider third country resettlement after progress had also been made towards repatriation back to Bhutan.

The refugees claim that they were forcefully evicted from their homeland in southern Bhutan, a charge denied by the Bhutanese government.

Bhutan has always questioned how many of the refugees are genuinely Bhutanese.