U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 2000 - Nepal

More than 130,000 refugees lived in Nepal at the end of 1999. A large majority, 110,000, were Bhutanese, of whom 97,500 lived in refugee camps and the remainder lived among the local population. During 1999, 81 Bhutanese sought asylum in Nepal. Although the Nepalese authorities rejected the asylum claims of 63 new arrivals, they did not deport them.

Nepal also hosted a long-standing Tibetan refugee population of about 20,000. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that 2,182 Tibetan refugees entered Nepal during the year, although almost all continued on to India. UNHCR also recognized as refugees 20 persons of various nationalities.

A Maoist insurgency and government counter-insurgency have left more than 1,100 people dead in Nepal since 1996 and engendered widespread human rights abuses. This conflict has not, however, caused significant internal displacement.

Refugees from Bhutan

Most of the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal entered between 1991 and 1992. Although few refugees have entered since then, the refugee population has grown from some 75,000 in 1992 to more than 110,000 at the end of 1999, primarily because of births. The refugees are Lhotsampa, ethnic Nepalese Hindus from southern Bhutan. They fled what they termed ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Bhutanese government, which primarily represents the country's majority Buddhist Drupka population.

A large majority of the refugees lived in six UNHCR-assisted camps in the Jhapa and Morang districts of eastern Nepal. According to the Nepalese government, another 1,400 registered refugees lived outside the camps, as did an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 unregistered refugees. UNHCR did not recognize or assist refugees outside the camps. Some of the refugees outside the camps originally settled in the camps but subsequently left to live with relatives or friends or to find work (although officially Nepal did not permit the refugees to work). Others never lived in the camps.

The refugees largely administered their camps, ran camp schools, and operated the health facilities. UNHCR and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) continued to help the refugees move toward self-sufficiency. Although the camps were officially closed, refugees generally moved in and out of them freely. In December, the Nepalese authorities began restricting movement in and out of Pathari Shanischare camp following complaints from local people that refugees were taking their jobs.

In 1996, Bhutanese refugees began demanding that they be allowed to repatriate. Since, the Appeal Movement Coordination Council has held yearly protests and marches in which hundreds of refugees have attempted – usually unsuccessfully – to return to Bhutan through India. During 1999, the Movement held several such protests, all of which ended in the refugees being pushed back either by the Indian or Bhutanese authorities.

In September, Nepal and Bhutan held the first talks on repatriation in more than three years. The Nepalese authorities – anxious for the refugees to repatriate – noted the economic, political, and environmental strain their presence posed on Nepal. But the Bhutanese, who did not want the refugees back, made few concessions. Bhutan agreed only to consider accepting a potentially larger number of refugees than it had earlier agreed to allow to return. It did not, however, take any steps to support their actual return, by year's end.

"Bhutan is not sincere in resolving the refugee crisis," said Refugee Watch (a publication of the South Asia Human Rights Forum) in December 1999. India, the only party with the political clout to move the talks along, chose not to become involved. Consequently, the talks achieved few tangible results.

Refugees from Tibet

The approximately 20,000 officially registered Tibetan refugees in Nepal included people who fled to Nepal from Tibet between 1959 and 1989 and children born to them before 1989, when Nepal stopped registering Tibetan refugees and no longer allowed them to remain. The Nepalese authorities did not register children born to the Tibetans after 1989 as refugees. In general, the refugees were well integrated in Nepal's economy; many worked making Tibetan carpets for export to the West.

Throughout the 1990s, Tibetan refugees continued to flee to India via Nepal. Most fled human rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese authorities in Tibet and sought to reach India, home to a large Tibetan exile community and to Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. In 1999, UNHCR reported that 2,182 Tibetans entered Nepal. UNHCR found all but 44 to be "of concern," and facilitated their onward travel to India.

The Nepalese authorities generally permitted the Tibetans to enter and directed them to a Tibetan-run transit center in Kathmandu, where they received medical and psycho-social services. Many suffered severe frostbite while making the difficult crossing over the Himalayas into Nepal. Some lost toes or feet, amputated because of the sustained cold. Others were robbed, sexually harassed, or forced to pay bribes while traveling between the Tibetan border and Kathmandu.