"The Bhutanese refugees have been waiting over a decade for a solution to their plight," said Rachael Reilly, Human Rights Watch's refugee policy advisor. "This is not a solution, but rather a wholesale violation of their rights."
Nepal and Bhutan today issued the results of a pilot verification process in one camp that divided the 12,000 refugees into four categories:
Three percent in Category IV: so-called "criminals" who would be liable to be tried in the Bhutanese courts.
More than 100,000 refugees of ethnic Nepalese origin from southern Bhutan have been living in camps in southeast Nepal for a dozen years after they were arbitrarily stripped of their nationality and forced to flee Bhutan in the early 1990s. The Bhutanese refugee situation has become one of the most protracted and neglected refugee crises in the world.
"This decision sends a message to other governments that it is legally acceptable to arbitrarily deprive a whole ethnic group of their nationality, expel them from their country, and then refuse to accept them back," said Ingrid Massage, interim director of the Asia and Pacific program at Amnesty International. "Bhutan's donors should not rubber-stamp a process that could render tens of thousands stateless."
The nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) criticized the length of time it has taken for the two governments to complete the verification process in Khudunabari camp, and the absence of any transparency or international monitoring. Although the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been administering the Bhutanese refugee camps since the start of the crisis in 1991, it has been systematically excluded by both governments from playing any role in the status determination and repatriation process.
The NGOs criticized the findings of the verification and argued that the four categories were seriously flawed. Refugees whose claims to Bhutanese citizenship were rejected may have been arbitrarily stripped of their nationality before they were forced out of Bhutan due to the discriminatory nature and application of Bhutan's citizenship laws. Furthermore, many of those refugees classified as having voluntarily emigrated from Bhutan were in fact forced into signing "voluntary migration" certificates before they were expelled from the country. Finally, refugees found to be "criminals" in the categorization process were likely to have been pro-democracy political activists who risked facing unfair trials and lack of due process protections if they were returned to Bhutan.
The NGOs argued that the Bhutanese refugees should have access to a full, fair and impartial appeal process with sufficient time to prepare their case and with access to independent advice. At present, they will have only fifteen days to appeal their categorization to the same adjudicators, and only on the basis of new documentary evidence. The NGOs expressed serious concern that the large number of refugees forced to reapply for their citizenship would face severe obstacles due to Bhutan's burdensome citizenship requirements and the arbitrary provisions of its citizenship laws.
The NGOs called on donor governments and governments in the region to increase pressure on the governments of Bhutan and Nepal to: