As Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal wind down, resettlement program is considered a success

It’s Teacher’s Day at Beldangi refugee camp. Students at Tri Ratna Secondary School are thanking their teachers with speeches, songs, and folk dances on a bamboo stage decorated with their mothers’ saris.

This has been a yearly tradition since the school opened in 1992, when the refugees had just arrived and classes were held in an empty field. Now, they study in a modest complex of bamboo classrooms that even has a science lab and small teachers’ lounge. But there aren’t many students left. The school’s principal, Purna Gurung, says the student body has dropped from nearly 3,000 to fewer than 200 as kids leave the camp and resettle in new countries. But he has no plans to leave himself.

“I have chosen to be here, longing for repatriation to Bhutan, my own country,” Gurung says.

Principal Purna Gurung, left, and one of his teachers at Tri Ratna Secondary School at the Beldangi refugee camp.

Credit: 

Salim Ali/PRI

Fleeing ethnic cleansing, finding new homes in third countries

In the 1990s, people in Nepal like Gurung, with certain ethnic backgrounds, were pushed out of the country through a severe campaign to retain Bhutanese national identity. Around 108,000 people moved through India to Nepal, where camps were eventually established. In 2007, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, started accepting applications for moves to third countries. After almost a decade of the resettlement program, more than 105,000 Bhutanese refugees have moved abroad. The vast majority have started new lives in the United States.

With about 90 percent of the refugees now abroad, the Bhutanese program is actually a huge success, as far as refugee resettlement goes. More often, refugees never get the option to move. According to Kevin Allen, the Kathmandu-based representative of the UN refugee agency, global displacement has now reached World War II levels. And fewer than 1 percent of refugees typically find safe homes in new countries.

“There are currently 65 million people forcibly displaced, it’s in the news, the Syria situation, South Sudan, Somalia, etc., and so the international community is hard pressed to meet needs globally,” Allen says.

The Bhutanese refugees were given until Nov. 15 of this year to apply to go abroad. By the end of the year, UNHCR will stop forwarding applications for resettlement. Allen predicts there will be about 10,000 people left here at the end.

One of the last to leave will be 29-year-old teacher Sita Adhikari.

Adhikari teaches high school math in the camp and makes $7 a month. She actually has a master’s degree in humanities. But when the camp’s last math teacher moved to the US, she was the most qualified person to take over.

Back in her bamboo hut, she teaches herself the lessons while trying to keep her young kids occupied enough to ignore the oppressive heat and mosquitoes. A small fan quietly fights back in the corner, but sweat trickles with any movement. When a problem stumps her, she texts her brother for help. He used to teach math in the camp too, but resettled to Rochester, New York, in 2008. Soon she’ll join him.

“I want to experience life and I want to provide my children more facilities than I used to have because I have taken much struggle in life now,” Adhikari says.

Sita Adhikari with children at a refugee camp, where she also teaches high school math.

Credit: 

Salim Ali/PRI

Some refugees don't want to be resettled

Adhikari says she’s late to apply for resettlement because her recent divorce has complicated her application. But some of her neighbors are still here because they don’t actually want to move. Some think they’ll be given land in the area if they stay.

“Some want to return back to Bhutan also. There are people. There is one grandfather there. He wants to move back to Bhutan.”

But Adhikari knows this is unlikely. She says people have been talking about moving back to Bhutan since the ’90s, but it hasn’t happened. One of these people holding out for return was Adhikari’s own primary school teacher, Dhanman Khadka, who came to her hut to talk.

Khadka has been teaching primary school in the camp since 1994 and was adamant against resettling; so much so that his wife and son moved to Australia without him in 2012. They haven’t spoken since. But now 64 and living alone, he’s resigned himself. Last March, Khadka applied for resettlement to Dallas, where his daughter lives.

“What to do — so many relatives are there. Better to go there, our life is better than here,” he says.

Khadka’s friend, 70-year-old Dal Bahadur Bista, disagrees.

“I’m not going. I’m staying here.”

Dal Bahadur Bista makes a cradle out of bamboo.

Credit: 

Salim Ali/PRI

Bista has lived in the camp for 24 years. He still considers Bhutan, where he had to abandon his house and fields of cardamom and orange trees, home.

“I have really really big hopes that I could be back one day in my land in Bhutan, and if not, I’d like to die here in this land, but I won’t go to a third country. At least I can die here in peace in this camp.”

Bista sits outside his hut sweating over bamboo he’s fashioning into a baby cradle. Refugees aren’t legally allowed to work in Nepal, but the informal economy is flush with their labor. He sells his bamboo crafts both in the camp and to locals outside, but he knows these skills won’t translate well in the West.

Global: Fr Varkey Perekkatt SJ gives Bhutanese refugees a voice

During the 36th General Congregation for the Society of Jesus, JRS had the opportunity to meet with Jesuits that previously worked for JRS.This is the first of a series of articles featuring their experiences in the field. 

Rome, 5 December 2016 - Fr Varkey Perekkatt SJ, former field director for JRS in Nepal, believes that education is what enabled more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees to be resettled and find a better future. 

Fr Varkey started working for the Jesuit Refugee Service South Asia Region in Nepal in 1998 after tens of thousands of Bhutanese people of Nepali origin fled persecution and crossed into India and Nepal for protection and asylum. The Bhutanese government cracked down on minorities, using rape, arson, deportation, and other tactics in an attempt to "protect" Bhutanese culture. By 1991, one-sixth of Bhutan's population was seeking asylum in Nepal and India.

Since 1994, JRS and Caritas Nepal along with UNHCR and other NGOs have worked together providing emergency relief, medical care, shelter, primary and secondary education, teacher training, vocational education, and education for adults and refugees with disabilities. JRS staff also visited refugees and their families in their homes to emphasise the importance of education.

In 2003, Fr Varkey become the field director in Nepal where he oversaw all levels of JRS' Bhutanese Refugee Education Programmes (BREP). During that time, he made constant visits to schools through the camps and noted that students were always eager to do well. Some schools had nearly 7,000 children. 

Working with a largely Hindu population, Fr Varkey described how people of different faiths would stand in solidarity with another. 

First song ever by Kishor Siwakoti from his Album "TRIBUTE".

What The World’s “Happiest” Country Did To Its Ethnic Minority Is Horrific

By Akshay Tarfe:

The media narrative about Bhutan still remains as a peaceful Himalayan utopia with a green economy. Most of that, might be true. But perhaps what we don’t know is that Bhutan is home to some of the most draconian and dictatorial laws coupled with a glaring history of xenophobia and ethnic hatred.

In 1996, the population in the refugee camps of Nepal exploded. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) declared that the camps had more than 100,000 people from Bhutan. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the UNHCR had to start a large-scale rehabilitation program for those people who had suffered due to the ethnic cleansing in Bhutan. The main reason was that they were not ‘Bhutanese enough’ to stay in a country where they had lived for generations. The Bhutanese army forced them to sign the forms which said they are leaving the country voluntarily. Overnight, these hardworking people became refugees and were forced to settle in 10 camps across Nepal.

It was part of a massive project sanctioned by the government to protect the culture and the identity of Bhutan. The Citizenship Act of 1985 was mostly targeted against the ‘Lhotshampas’ community in Bhutan. This ethnic group consisted of people of Nepalese origin who migrated to Bhutan after economic reforms were announced in 1960s. They came here as construction workers and labourers and settled in the southern parts of the country. Their distinct language, culture and religion were considered to be against the ‘Driglam Namzha’, the Bhutanese national dress and etiquette code.

Bhutanese refugees wait for food at a camp. Source: Prakash Mathema/Getty

After Sikkim became part of India, the political masters in Thimphu saw it as a victory for the Nepali migrant majority over the monarchy of Sikkim. This, combined with other factors, forced them to pass draconian and dictatorial laws to make Bhutan a homogeneous country with one language. Immigration is strictly prohibited in Bhutan today. The so called ‘One Nation, One People‘ policy enacted by the government pushed the Himalayan Kingdom into long lasting ethnic violence.

The importance of Buddhism cannot be denied in the national identity of Bhutan but the country has rejected idea of secularism by making Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism as the state religion. The constitution of 2008 provides religious freedom but it has remained largely on paper. The International Religious Freedom report published by the U.S. State Department says that societal and governmental pressure for conformity with religious norms was prevalent.

‘I am encouraged by the openness of Nepal government to discuss the fate of remaining refugees’

We have been stepping up our advocacy and diplomacy with the government of Bhutan on this issue. At this point, we do not have green light but the conversation is still going on. The dialogue is there, the Anchordiplomacy is there, and we are in talks with Bhutan about this.

Jun 20, 2016- The third-country group resettlement of the Bhutanese refugees is almost coming to a close. While the referral process has been stopped, the process could take until early 2017 to complete. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) believes that about 10,000 refugees will be left behind in camps for various reasons; about two thousand have declined to take part in the resettlement and instead have opted for voluntary repatriation to Bhutan; there are cases of mixed marriages; and, several hundreds have been rejected by recipient countries. With the resettlement window closing, UNHCR has two other durable options that it is pursuing: voluntary repatriation and local integration. Against this backdrop, John Narayan Parajuli spoke with the outgoing UNHCR Nepal Representative Craig Sanders—in the first week of June before he left to take up his new assignment in Geneva—about the end of the resettlement process, the fate of the remaining population and prospects of local integration and repatriation to Bhutan.

So when is the resettlement process for Bhutanese refugees coming to an end?

A: The large-scale resettlement is coming to an end. But I hope there will always be an opportunity for resettlement for some people-- through family reunification or through other means. But that’s going to be in a very individualized basis and not group resettlement. We finished most of our referrals at the end of last year. We’re now processing other cases. As you know the departure time is around 18 months. So while we finished our referrals in the December of last year, those people may not depart until the end of this year or sometime in 2017. So, in short, the process is coming to an end. But hopefully, there will always be a small window of resettlements. But it will be in small numbers.

What will happen to the UNHCR presence both in the camps and in Kathmandu once the group resettlement process is over?

A: Well, our interest is to find solutions for everyone, including those who for various reasons are likely to remain behind in Nepal. We have a lot of mixed marriages and we have approximately 2000 people who did not want to pursue resettlement. We have had people who said they want to pursue resettlement but later changed their minds. So there will be a population that will remain behind. And our interest is to see that everyone has a solution. So, in terms of our presence, I think we will try, as much as possible,

Canada provides CAD $ 250,000 to assist Bhutanese refugees in Nepal

Jun 13, 2016- Canada’s Deputy Ambassador to Nepal, Jess Dutton, on Monday announced a contribution of CAD $ 250,000 by the Government of Canada to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Nepal to improve access to essential services for the Bhutanese refugees.

The announcement was made during his visit to refugee camps in eastern Nepal, where he interacted with Bhutanese youth and women groups.

“We are grateful to the Government of Canada for this generous contribution,” said Craig Sanders, UNHCR Representative in Nepal. “Canada has been a longstanding partner and such funding helps us to continue to provide vital services for the Bhutanese refugees in the two remaining camps.”

The donation comes at a time when maintaining camp services at a desired level is proving increasingly difficult due to limited resources and a funding shortage.

The grant will be used to provide various services including shelter, health, water, sanitation, education, protection and legal assistance for some 15,500 Bhutanese refugees who remain in Beldangi and Sanischare camps.

“We are pleased to support UNHCR Nepal in helping Bhutanese refugees with their essential needs,” said Dutton. “Our assistance reaffirms the importance we place on protecting the human rights of refugees.”

The grant is part of the CAD $ 32.6 million support to UNHCR announced by the Government of Canada earlier this year to assist and protect people of concern in 20 countries.

Since 2007, Canada has become home to over 6,600 resettled Bhutanese refugees. It is one of eight resettlement countries that have accepted more than 103,000 Bhutanese refugees since the beginning of the third country resettlement programme in late 2007.

Prior to this programme, some 108,000 refugees from Bhutan were living in seven camps in Jhapa and Morang districts in eastern Nepal.

UNHCR Nepal continues to work with the Government of Nepal and other partners to find sustainable solutions for the refugees who will not resettle.
Source:Kathmandupost.

Why do you love Canada? Faces of newest residents of Newfoundland and Labrador

Source:CBC NEWS.CA/NEWS/CANADA

At a recent Association for New Canadians event, photographer Andrew Edwards captured dozens of portraits of new residents of this province. 

Each told the association why they love their new country. 

Azarak: Came to Newfoundland from Sudan in 2008

"Canada is my second country and the best country."

Amanail: Came to Canada from Sudan in November 2015

"I like Canada because it has freedom and I am free."

Sifa & Charlotte: Young sisters from the Congo came to Newfoundland in December 2015

"Canada… is a safe country and everyone has the right to choose friends."

Noway: Came to Canada in September with his mother and siblings

He is proud of the fact that, "Here in Canada, we have full freedom of human rights." 

Debora, Ferdinand, Tereza, Naomi and Divine: Came to Canada together in March 2015 from Burundi 

The students attend the ANC ESL Training Centre where they study English five days a week. They all agree that "Canada is a peaceful country."

Dhan and Asman Kumari: Originally from Bhutan but spent many years in Nepal before immigrating to Canada in 2013 with their children

"In Canada, I like the freedom, the people, and going to school."

Farm Allows Refugees to Get Back to Roots While Growing Business

 BY MEGAN REUTHER

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa –It started as a vision from former refugees, who wanted to get back to their roots and grow their own produce here in Iowa. The dream is now a reality on the Global Greens Farm.

The Bhandari family works together growing produce on a plot of land.

"We are happy to have land and grow our own produce, especially the crops, the vegetables we don't find in the grocery story we like to eat, our cultural crops," Tika Bhandari said.

You'll find potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce varieties and more on the 100 x 100 plot in West Des Moines.

“My dad was a farmer back in Bhutan for 18 acres of land," Tika said.

The Bhandaris are from Bhutan. They spent 18 years in a refugee camp in Nepal before coming to Des Moines. They are now U.S. citizens. They started growing produce on the Global Greens Farm three years ago. The Global Greens Farm is part of a program through Lutheran Services in Iowa to help refugee farmers get back to their roots.

"In 2013, Valley Church and Valley Community Center provided this land for us, and it started with a vision from former refugees who farmed in their home country and had a desire to get back to the land and grow food again here," said LSI Director of Refugee Community Services Nick Wuertz.

Farmers sell the food at farmers markets, the Iowa Food Co-op and through community supported agriculture.

Local inventor designs automatic doma peeler

Invention: A few kilometres from Gola Bazaar in Sipsu is a small village of Girigaon. And here is a man that locals call “scientist”.

Budhiman Mongar, 52, is famous. He is always thinking about creating or inventing something. His mind works like a machine.

This is the same man who some years ago wanted to build a helicopter. He did but the chopper could not fly. The project proved too expensive and he ran out of budget.

“The dream has not died,” says Budhiman, looking over the craps of the machine he so wanted to see hover in the sky. “I will succeed someday.”

While he has stashed his dream of building a flying machine temporarily, Budhiman is on to his next project – building a machine that can peel 100 domas in a go.

Peeling doma is an exhausting enterprise. And this sure is a good news for paan shops.

“Such a machine doesn’t exist. And that’s exactly what I am going to create,” says Budhiman, who expects to complete his project in about a month. “This machine can peel more than 100 domas automatically in less than 10 minutes.”

The idea struck him about two years when he was sitting by a paan shop looking at a guy peeling doma. Not long after, Budhiman developed a prototype without automation.

Now, though, everything is pretty much all set. Nuts and bolts, blades, wire…all ready to give shape and roar to the machine.

“All I now need is some peace to focus on my project,” says the village scientist. “Complete peace is what I seek.”

Already Budhiman has received orders from doma sellers in Samtse. That means he must work hard. Building one doma-peeling machine will cost him no less than Nu 6,000.

Hiawatha Public Library provides permanent home for Bhutanese learners

By:Brea Love.
HIAWATHA, Iowa (KCRG-TV9) – The Hiawatha Public Library teamed up with the
 Catherine McAuely Center to provide English classes for a group of Bhutanese refugees.

The group fled their home of Bhutan out of need and moved to American start a new life.
Most of them settled in Hiawatha, but with the Catherine McAuely Center’s downtown
location, many of them had no means of transportation.

That’s when the Hiawatha Public Library offered to turn the center’s English course
 into a library program, which provided a permanent space within a mile radius of
their homes.

“We offered that space to them and it has just blossomed into a really great program,”
Library Director
 Jeaneal Weeks said. “The Bhutanese people come every week, and they’re so excited
 to learn. When there is no class they come asking for class.”

It’s that dedication that inspires the instructor Katie Lanius. She said teaching the course
 is her favorite part of the week.

“This group is so motivated and so hardworking that I kind of feed off of their enthusiasm,”
 Lanius said. “They are walking a mile or two to come to class. They do it in the freezing
 temperatures, they do it in the rain, when it’s really warm in the summers, so they’re
motivation is extremely high.”

The students are a variety of ages, between 20 and 70 years old. Some of them have at most
six years of education, others have none. Lanius spends time working on things as simple
as colors or some of the more advance students preparing for their citizenship interview.

“Anyone can learn English at any age, but the older you get the more challenging it gets

 your brain just isn’t as quick or receptive to picking up a new language,” she said.

Student Bala Edhikari is studying for his citizenship. He said he’s thankful he has the
opportunity to come to class every week.

“We have no English in our country we are from Bhutan, we are learning English here,
some people don’t know how to write read,” Edhikari said. “They teach everything, 

but some of my friends they don’t know.”

Lanius uses patience and repetition, and assures each student they can learn with time.

“The English empowers them to be more comfortable talking with their children’s teachers,
my students are now being able to obtain jobs,” she said.

Lanius is grateful for the library and their help to make sure these Bhutanese students 

succeed.

Avenue W: A gathering place for all nations

By:Thia James.

Chhiring Tamang was only nine years old when her family had to leave Bhutan to live in a refugee camp in Nepal.

Nearly three years ago, she and her husband left Nepal for Canada, following her brother Ramesh’s path to a new life in Saskatoon. Ramesh is the Nepalese group’s pastor at the Meadowgreen House for All Nations on Saskatoon’s Avenue W South, where Chhiring — known as Puunam to those closest to her — learns English.

There, they also found a friend in Pastor Rick Guenther, who oversees the House for All Nations.

“He can help us, everything. How to respect people, how to deal with friends, everything when we move to another place,” she says.

Chhiring lived in the Nepalese refugee camp for 18 years. Her family’s home was made of bamboo and their kitchen was constructed with mud. The home was decorated with paper crafts.

The family was among the many thousands of ethnic Nepalese who were subject to restrictive policies in Bhutan. The Bhutanese royal government enacted those policies in the late 1980s out of fear over the growing ethnic Nepalese population within its borders.

Her grandmother urged the family to leave Bhutan and join her in the refugee camp out of fear for their safety.

When she came to Saskatoon, she went to the Open Door Society.

“Very difficult when we came here,” she recalls. “In my country, we always speak our language only. Only Nepalese.”

At school, she took English classes. At home, she spoke Nepalese.

After taking programs through the Open Door Society — one of the programs partnered with the Meadowgreen House for All Nations — she found work at Superstore.

Refugees in West Michigan: A growing population looking for help

BY BRODY CARTER

WEST MICHIGAN – Former refugee Krishna Bista is helping hundreds of fellow Napoli refugees establish a new life after being forced from their homes in their native country.

“At age 5, in 1990, I left Bhutan with my uncle’s family and grandma,” said Bista. “We were part of a mass exodus of culturally Nepali Bhutanese expelled by the King of Bhutan who wanted to create an ethnically pure society."

For the next 18 years, Bista lived in a refugee camp in southeastern Nepal, losing hope along the way.

“I remember thinking once that God had created refugees because He took delight in their misery,” said Bista.

Bista came to Grand Rapids as a refugee with his family in 2008, finding his struggle had just begun.

“The biggest problem is the language, language is the big issue,” said Bista.

Bhutanese refugees in Nepal pledged $1m support

The United States has confirmed a US$1 million contribution for the World Food Programme (WFP) to provide food assistance to refugees from Bhutan living in Nepal. The contribution from the United States will help WFP provide basic food such as rice, pulses and vegetable oil for nearly 17,000 refugees.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been supporting WFP’s refugee operation in Nepal for the past 10 years.

“USAID’s contribution to WFP is part of our global effort to respond to protracted crises. The United States has contributed almost US$34 million to provide food assistance to refugees from Bhutan in Nepal between 2006 and 2016,” said Amy Tohill-Stull, Acting Mission Director, USAID/Nepal. “The United States has also become home to the great majority of resettled Bhutanese refugees.”

“The refugee community is very happy about the news of USAID’s support and I would like to thank donors for their support for the Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal,” said Champa Singh Rai, Camp Secretary of Sanischare refugee camp.

“WFP is grateful to USAID for this generous support, especially at this time of unprecedented global needs of refugees,” said Pippa Bradford, WFP Representative and Country Director. “Predictable and secure funding like this is important for the effective longer-tem management of an operation, as well as showing commitment to the refugees.

Source:Kathmandupost.