BIRTAMOD (JHAPA), AUG 05 -
Thirty-seven Bhutanese refugees left for Britain under the UN’s third country resettlement programme on Thursday. They are the first batch of Bhutanese deportees settling in the U.K. that has pledged to shelter 100 refugees by the end of 2010.

Countries like the U.S., Australia, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway have already taken in the refugees.

Now, Britain will be a new home away from home for the Bhutanese refugees, who since the 1990s entered Nepal to escape the persecution employed by the Druk regime.

The refugees of Nepali origin have been living in seven campsites in Morang and Jhapa districts under the care of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Series of bilateral talks between the governments of Nepal and Bhutan regarding the refugee crisis yielded no result.

The UN, with the assistance of the International Organis-ation for Migration, began resettling the refugees in Nepal in western countries in 2008. Over 34,000 of them have so far been resettled.

The U.S. alone has allowed in more than 29,000 exiled Bhutanese with over 50,000 refugees on the waiting list.

This aside. There are a large number of Bhutanese unwilling to be a part of the resettlement programme, though. They wish to return to their homeland. But with no headway being made on their repatriation, their future is in limbo.

“Something must be done for those of us who are not considering the resettlement programme,” said D.P. Kafle, rights activist and one of those Bhutanese disinclined to move further away from their motherland.

Posted on: 2010-08-06 08:25

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