Right of return, (Bhutan)

For more than 15 years, the Bhutanese government painted circles around Kathmandu's authorities, as well as those concerned in the international community, regarding the repatriation of the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa refugees. After Thimphu's Ngalong elites noticed a 'demographic imbalance' in the making during the late 1980s and early 1990s these erstwhile citizens of Druk Yul were unceremoniously herded out of the country and made stateless. For long years; the Lhotshampa made up the second-largest refugee community in Southasia, after the Afghans residing in the NWFP in Pakistan. They also had perhaps the poorest international refugee profile, weighed down by the 'Shangri-La' image of a home country that purported to be able to do no wrong, along with the subliminal understanding among many in the international community (including India) that there was always a Nepal to take the Lhotshampa in.

Fortunately, the steadfast support of the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, helped the Lhotshampa to remain together as an exile community. This also allowed the refugees to maintain their desire to go back home to their hill villages in the southern districts of Bhutan. The Lhotshampa thus became a festering sore on the 'happy' image that Thimphu was trying so hard to promote. With constant prevarication, the leitmotif of the Bhutanese delegations during over 17 rounds of talks with Kathmandu, the refugees remained in limbo in the hot plains of Jhapa and Morang districts in eastern Nepal.