20-26 June 2014 #712

Stateless state

JAN MØLLER HANSEN

It is well known that Nepal is home to refugees from Bhutan and Tibet, but what many may not know is that there are about 1,000 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in transit from trouble spots around the world living in Kathmandu. They are from Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma or Iraq, and arrive here in the hope that they will be resettled, or are economic migrants duped by human traffickers.

Meanwhile, of the 120,000 refugees from Bhutan who have lived or were born in refugee camps in Nepal in the last 22 years, 90,000 have been resettled in the United States and six other countries. However, one mother doesn’t want to leave behind an abandoned baby she adopted six years ago.