Names of verification officials exchanged

January 4, 2001
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Kathmandu, Jan.4: In line with the agreement reached last week, Nepal and Bhutan today exchanged names of officials to form the Joint Verification Team (JVT) to verify Bhutanese refugees in the camps in eastern Nepal this month.

“On the basis of the decision made at the 10th meeting of the Ministerial Joint Committee held in Kathmandu from 24 to 28 December, 2000, Nepal and Bhutan have exchanged the names of the JVT,” a press statement of Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated here today.

The Nepalese team, according to the press release, would be led by Usha Nepal, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs. “Other members include officials from the Ministries of Home, Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, and Foreign Affairs.”

According to the Foreign Ministry, the Bhutanese team will be led by Dr. Sonam Tenzin, Director at the Bhutanese Ministry of Home Affairs.

The JVT, as agreed by the two Himalayan Kingdoms in the 10th round of talks last week, will comprise of 10 members – five from each side. There will be no third party participation in the verification team. “The verification will be done bilaterally,” Foreign Minister Chakra Prasad Banstola had told the press after the talks were over last week.

The verification, to start with, will take place in one of the seven UNHCR-maintained refugee camps in Jhapa and Morang districts. The two nations had also agreed to verify the refugees on the basis of family unit. “We would like to make sure that the refugee families do not break,” Bhutanese Foreign Minister Jigme Y. Thinley had told the press after the talks last week.

He had also said that Bhutan would consider “all the valid documents of the refugees” to verify their originality from the Dragon Kingdom.

The Bhutanese statement at the end of the last talks was dubbed as a dramatic turn since it had been adamant on its stand regarding the verification of the refugees all over the years.

The Druk Yul had earlier demanded that each and every refugee in the camps should be identified individually. But given Bhutan’s way of maintaining its demographic record, Nepal was pressing on family units for verification. Bhutan distributes its citizenship and the land ownership document only to family heads.

Nepal and Bhutan’s agreement on the verification of the refugees last week came as a major breakthrough on the impasse that had held the refugee crisis hostage for the last ten years.

After Bhutan forcefully evicted its southern Nepali speaking citizens in the late Eighties, forcing them to live as refugees in Nepal, the two Himalayan Kingdoms have held ten round of talks in the last eight years to find a solution of the problem

During the first round of talks in 1993, Nepal and Bhutan agreed to categorise the around 100,000 Bhutanese refugees in Nepal into four groups – bonafide Bhutanese, Bhutanese who have emigrated, Bhutanese who have committed crimes, and non-Bhutanese.

It is under these categories’ basis, the verification will take place this month. Even as Bhutan has made its stand flexible on the verification process, it is yet to make its position clear on the four categories of the refugees.

Till the mid 90’s the Dragon Kingdom was vocal that it would take back only category one refugees – the bonafide citizens. Due to this rigid stance on Bhutan’s part, the talks between the two countries had stonewalled for around three years after 1996.

Now that the focus has been more on the refugee-verification process, the issue of treating the categories is in the backburner.