Khudunabari Refugee Camp

Khudunabari Refugee Camp was one of the seven Bhutanese refugee camps established in Jhapa district of southeastern Nepal during the early 1990s to accommodate Lhotshampa refugees expelled from Bhutan. Located approximately 15 kilometers east of the town of Damak, the camp housed a peak population of roughly 12,000 refugees and operated from 1992 until its closure and consolidation in the 2010s. While smaller than the Beldangi complex, Khudunabari occupies a central place in the history of the Bhutanese refugee crisis because it was selected as the pilot site for the Joint Verification Team (JVT) exercise — a bilateral process between Nepal and Bhutan that became one of the most contentious episodes of the entire crisis.^[1]

The JVT verification at Khudunabari, conducted between 2001 and 2003, was intended to categorize refugees according to their circumstances of departure from Bhutan, determining who was eligible for repatriation. When the results were released in June 2003 — classifying only 2.4% of the screened population as "bona fide Bhutanese" forcibly expelled and entitled to return — the camp erupted in protests that turned violent. The episode effectively destroyed the bilateral negotiation track between Nepal and Bhutan and set the stage for the eventual shift toward third-country resettlement as the primary durable solution.^[2]

Establishment and Camp Life

Khudunabari was established in 1992 as the steady flow of Lhotshampa refugees crossing into Nepal from India overwhelmed existing transit arrangements. The camp was situated on leased agricultural land in the flat Terai lowlands, surrounded by rice paddies and small Nepali farming communities. Like the other six camps, Khudunabari was organized into sectors and sub-sectors, with bamboo-and-thatch shelters arranged along narrow unpaved lanes.

The camp's population stabilized at approximately 12,000 by the mid-1990s. Humanitarian services followed the standard model across all seven camps: monthly WFP food rations (rice, lentils, oil, salt), health posts operated by AMDA with referral services to local Nepali hospitals, primary and secondary schools run by Caritas Nepal under UNHCR coordination, and water and sanitation infrastructure maintained by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Camp Management Committees provided elected self-governance, and cultural and religious institutions — temples, youth clubs, women's organizations — sustained community life.

Khudunabari's residents, like those in other camps, suffered from the constraints of protracted displacement: no right to work, restricted movement, dependence on humanitarian assistance, and the psychological burden of indefinite statelessness. The camp was also known for a particularly active literary and cultural scene, with resident poets and writers producing works that circulated widely across the refugee community.

The Joint Verification Team (JVT)

The JVT was a mechanism agreed upon during the tenth round of Nepal-Bhutan bilateral talks in December 2000. The two governments agreed to jointly verify the identities and circumstances of departure of refugees in one camp as a pilot, with the intention of extending the process to all seven camps if the pilot succeeded. Khudunabari was selected as the pilot camp.

The JVT comprised an equal number of officials from Nepal and Bhutan. Between March 2001 and May 2003, the team interviewed approximately 12,000 refugees in Khudunabari, examining their claims of Bhutanese nationality and the circumstances under which they had left Bhutan. The Bhutanese government had established four categories for classification: (1) bona fide Bhutanese forcibly evicted, (2) Bhutanese who had emigrated voluntarily, (3) non-Bhutanese, and (4) criminals. Only Category 1 refugees would be entitled to return with restoration of citizenship and property.

The process was deeply flawed from the outset. Refugees reported that Bhutanese officials on the team were hostile and confrontational during interviews, treating the exercise as an interrogation rather than a verification. Refugees who presented documentary evidence of their Bhutanese citizenship — including citizenship identity cards (kasho) issued by the Bhutanese government itself — often had their documents dismissed or questioned. The Bhutanese government's position was that many refugees had forfeited their citizenship by signing "voluntary migration forms" (VMFs) — documents that human rights organizations had extensively documented were signed under duress, coercion, or outright force during the expulsions of 1990-1993.^[3]

The 2.4% Result and Its Aftermath

When the JVT released its findings on June 25, 2003, the results were devastating. Of the approximately 12,000 refugees screened in Khudunabari, only 293 — a mere 2.4% — were classified as Category 1 (bona fide Bhutanese forcibly expelled). The vast majority were placed in Category 2 (voluntary emigrants), which meant that even if they were allowed to return, they would have to reapply for Bhutanese citizenship from scratch, with no guarantee of approval and no restoration of confiscated land and property. A significant number were classified as Category 3 (non-Bhutanese) or Category 4 (criminals).

The refugee community received these results with fury and disbelief. The classifications bore no resemblance to the documented reality of the expulsions, in which Bhutanese security forces had systematically forced Lhotshampa to leave through a campaign of arrests, torture, confiscation of citizenship documents, demolition of homes, and forced signing of VMFs. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford disputed the categorization, arguing that it did not align with documented evidence of coerced departures and that it retroactively classified forced displacement as "voluntary emigration." The Bhutanese government maintained that the process was conducted fairly and that the results reflected the actual circumstances of departure.^[4]

On December 22, 2003, violence erupted in Khudunabari when a mob of angry refugees attacked the Bhutanese members of the JVT. Several Bhutanese officials were assaulted and had to be evacuated under Nepali police protection. The Bhutanese government used the incident to suspend all further verification work, declaring that the violence proved the refugees were "anti-national elements" who could not be trusted. The JVT process was never resumed, and no verification was conducted in the remaining six camps. The bilateral negotiation track, which had already been moribund through fifteen rounds of inconclusive talks, was effectively dead.^[5]

Consequences and Legacy

The failure of the JVT at Khudunabari was a pivotal turning point in the Bhutanese refugee crisis. It demonstrated conclusively to many observers — including the United States, UNHCR, and eventually a majority of refugees themselves — that the Bhutanese government had no genuine intention of accepting the return of the expelled Lhotshampa population. International observers, including UNHCR and several Western governments, questioned whether the categorization methodology had been structured to minimize the number of refugees qualifying for return. The Bhutanese government rejected this interpretation, maintaining that the process was transparent and evidence-based.

For the refugees of Khudunabari, the JVT experience was deeply demoralizing. Families who had carried their Bhutanese citizenship documents through years of exile found those documents given little weight in the verification process. Many refugees interpreted the results as a signal that the Bhutanese government would not accept their return regardless of the evidence presented.

The JVT's failure accelerated the shift toward third-country resettlement as the primary solution. The United States, which had been monitoring the bilateral process, began actively exploring a large-scale resettlement program in 2006, leading to the landmark announcement of the resettlement program in 2007. In a bitter irony, the very exercise that was supposed to pave the way for repatriation ended up demonstrating its impossibility and clearing the path for the dispersal of the Lhotshampa community across the globe.

Khudunabari camp was eventually consolidated and closed as its population departed through resettlement. The site of the camp, like the other closed camps, returned to agricultural use, with little physical trace remaining of the community that had lived there for nearly two decades.

References

1. UNHCR. "Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal: Comprehensive Solutions." https://www.unhcr.org/asia/bhutanese-refugees
2. Human Rights Watch. "Last Hope: The Need for Durable Solutions for Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal and India." May 2007. https://www.hrw.org/report/2007/05/16/last-hope/need-durable-solutions-bhutanese-refugees-nepal-and-india
3. Amnesty International. "Bhutan: Nationality, Expulsion, and the Right to Return." ASA 14/001/2003.
4. Hutt, Michael. Unbecoming Citizens: Culture, Nationhood, and the Flight of Refugees from Bhutan. Oxford University Press, 2003.
5. International Crisis Group. "Bhutan: Between Two Giants." Asia Report No. 204, April 2011.

Contributed by Anonymous Contributor, Akron OH