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Is resettling refugees a success or repatriating?

20 September 2016, Amsterdam. The foreign policy of the US President Barack Obama in regard to Bhutan particularly over the innate rights of the forcibly Exiled Bhutanese Lhotshampa ethnic minorities remained obscure during his tenure though his Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, Nisha Biswal hailed from that regional background who could be in good book of the geopolitics there.
US ambassador to Nepal and UNHCR, IOM representative
with an Americaning Bhutanese. Photo: kathmandupost

Much expected international pressure against Bhutan’s regime at least to recognise the Universal Declarations namely the article 13, that Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country’ and let a minimum number of their exiled citizens repatriate, indeed also as part of the burden sharing for resettling them as shown practically by Eight Western countries appear dropped out of the policy vista without putting any efforts. 

When the previous Secretary Richard visited Bhutan during the initial years of resettling the Bhutanese refugees in the Western countries, he declared to let 60,000 of them settle in USA but today it is continuing and reached 90,000 of them. US ambassador to Nepal, Aliana B Teplitz hosted a farewell program to a refugee family that marked this number going to resettle in USA today. Also present in the program were the Chief of Mission of the International Organization for Migration, Paul Norton and the Country Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,  Kevin Allen and other Nepali dignitaries. Having fled from Bhutan for security Sarhi Maya Thatal is flying to USA tomorrow, a form of forced migration’ along with her two sons and a daughter born in the Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal.

A week earlier the Ambassador visited the Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal and declared the resettling program for the refuges in the 3rd countries is coming to close, obviously since there are only about 10,000 still in the camps dreaming where to go. The ambassador Teplitz asserted that International community continues to ask the Bhutan government to take those few refugees who would like to return home she did not disclose the outcome how Bhutan’s regime responded, though the jugglery wordings of Buddhistic expression that  it ‘always wished to see the end of the problem’ are heard throughout the last 25 years. 

Should there be international pressure guided by the foreign policy of the US, there would have been a undertaking in effect by now to repatriate those few thousands of exiled Bhutanese minority stranded as refugees in Nepal. So far more than 105,000 of them are resettled in the distant countries from where the homeland cannot be even dreamed. It is a paradox to call a ‘successful solution to the refugee crises as it is contrary to their fundamental rights and freedom. Repatriating the refugees should be a successful score.

Meanwhile Nepal’s minister for foreign affairs Prakash Saram Mahat delegating to the UN General Assembly addressed yesterday ‘to respect the right of the refugees to return to their homeland’, but unless the super power like USA do not voice in the same way, Bhutanese ethnic minority Lotshampas have no providence even of those living in Bhutan.


Nanda Gautam

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note: The next day on 21 Sept.16 after the above publication, Bhutan's Prime Minister's letter refuting US appear in the media (Kathmandu post) see letter below.

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