Bhutan girl tells U.N. of plight

The refugees, mostly ethnic Nepalis, fled in 1990 following what they say were harsh cultural reforms by the Bhutan government

UNITED NATIONS -- A Bhutanese girl at a United Nations children's summit has called on the world body to speed up the repatriation of thousands of refugees living in Nepalese camps.

Ganga Adhikari handed High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers a petition to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, President George Bush and other leaders signed by 43,000 refugee children from the camps.

"My message to them is that children should not be made refugees," she said in a statement.

The 17-year old, who says she was forced to leave the Himalayan kingdom at the age of six, highlighted the plight of Bhutanese refugees at the meeting in New York.

Some 100,000 mainly Hindu refugees fled from Buddhist Bhutan, between China and India, about a decade ago, declaring that they had suffered religious and cultural persecution.

They still live in seven camps sponsored by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in the east of Hindu Nepal.

Overseas assistance has lessened the economic, social, environmental and political problems for Nepal, yet the refugee problem between the two Himalayan nations remains.

Nepal and Bhutan jointly started the verification of nearly 100,000 Bhutanese refugees back in March 2001

Speaking at the panel with Adhikari, Lubbers criticized countries that put refugee children and those seeking asylum in detention centers while their cases were being processed.

The issue has long soured ties between the two kingdoms.

The imbroglio continues as Bhutan has doubts whether all the refugees in the camps are genuine, and is still reluctant to take them all back.

Yet Nepal is keen for the secretive Dragon Kingdom to repatriate all the refugees.

In an article in the Kathmandu Post, Bhutan said it would consider third party mediation on the issue, potentially via India, as long as it was impartial.

Proof of identity

The problem is to do with status classification -- a process that has been painfully slow.

The two kingdoms, which are among the world's poorest nations, agreed to divide the refugees into four categories -- those who were forced out of Bhutan, those who fled on their own, non-Bhutanese and criminals.

In 2001 a joint team from the two countries began interviewing the ethnic Nepali refugees.

Only 10,000 of the refugees have been processed so far and critics say at this speed it would take several years to complete the work. And even these refugees cannot return to Bhutan until the dispute is settled in full.

Bhutan says it is ready to take back those people who were forcefully evicted and refuses to take those who left voluntarily, saying they had forfeited the right to Bhutanese citizenship.

However, Nepal wants Bhutan to offer those who left of their own free will citizenship since most of the refugees fall into this category.

As serious differences in the perceptions of the two governments over the refugee issue continues, 100,000 mainly ethnic Nepali refugees continue to live in hope that they will one day return to their homeland.