Camp Consolidation and Closure (2011-2023)

The consolidation and closure of the Bhutanese refugee camps in southeastern Nepal was a gradual process spanning more than a decade, from approximately 2011 to 2023. As the third-country resettlement program — launched in 2007 and led by the United States — progressively reduced the population of the seven Bhutanese refugee camps, the operational logic of maintaining multiple settlements became untenable. UNHCR and its implementing partners began consolidating the remaining population into fewer camps, eventually closing all seven and ending more than three decades of organized Bhutanese refugee settlement on Nepali soil.^[1]

The closures were not merely administrative events. For the refugees involved, being moved from one camp to another — or watching their community dismantled around them as neighbors departed for Pittsburgh, Atlanta, or Auckland — was an emotionally wrenching experience layered on top of the original trauma of expulsion from Bhutan. The consolidation process also brought to the fore the question that had haunted the crisis from the beginning: what would happen to those who did not leave? The remaining refugees — those who declined resettlement, those whose cases were rejected or complicated, and those who simply fell through the cracks — faced an uncertain future as the international community's attention and resources shifted elsewhere.

Background: The Resettlement Program

The third-country resettlement program was launched in November 2007 after the failure of fifteen rounds of bilateral negotiations between Nepal and Bhutan to produce any repatriation agreement. The United States offered to accept up to 60,000 Bhutanese refugees, with additional places offered by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The program was coordinated by UNHCR and implemented through the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which managed cultural orientation programs, health screenings, travel logistics, and initial reception in destination countries.

The resettlement process moved faster than many had anticipated. By the end of 2012, more than 60,000 refugees had departed the camps, with the United States alone accepting over 50,000. The pace accelerated the depopulation of the smaller camps to the point where maintaining full services — health posts, schools, water and sanitation systems, food distribution — became increasingly costly and impractical. UNHCR began planning the consolidation of camps as early as 2010.^[2]

Chronology of Closures

The consolidation proceeded in stages, generally following a pattern of closing the smallest and most depopulated camps first and transferring remaining residents to the larger Beldangi complex, which had the most extensive infrastructure and was designated as the final consolidated settlement.

Goldhap, one of the smaller camps in Jhapa district, was among the first to be fully closed, with its remaining population transferred to Beldangi by 2012. Timai, also in Jhapa, followed a similar trajectory, closing as its population fell below the threshold at which maintaining a separate camp was operationally justified. Khudunabari — the camp where the controversial Joint Verification Team exercise had taken place — was consolidated next.

Sanischare, the large camp in Morang district, was one of the last to close outside the Beldangi complex. Its geographic separation from the Jhapa camps and its relatively large remaining population meant it continued to operate longer than the smaller Jhapa settlements. However, by the mid-2010s, it too was closed, with its remaining residents moving to Beldangi.

Within the Beldangi complex itself, Beldangi II Extension was the first section to close, followed by Beldangi II. Beldangi I, the original and largest camp, served as the final consolidated settlement, housing the diminishing population of refugees who had not yet departed for resettlement or who did not intend to leave. Beldangi I continued to operate until its final closure in 2023, marking the definitive end of the organized camp system.^[3]

The Consolidation Experience

For refugees transferred between camps during the consolidation, the experience was disorienting and often distressing. Families who had lived in a particular camp for fifteen or twenty years — who had built their shelters, established their social networks, worshipped at local temples, and raised their children in a specific sector of a specific camp — were uprooted and relocated to an unfamiliar settlement. The move disrupted social ties, school enrollment, and the small-scale economic arrangements (shops, gardens, informal employment contacts) that families had painstakingly built over years.

Camp closures also forced confrontations with the material reality of decades of temporary existence. When shelters were dismantled, families discovered how little they actually possessed — the accumulated material of a lifetime in a refugee camp could typically be loaded onto a single truck or cart. The clearing of camp sites and reversion of the land to agricultural use erased the physical evidence of communities where tens of thousands of people had been born, married, mourned, celebrated, and lived for a generation.

International organizations managed the consolidation with varying degrees of sensitivity. UNHCR and its partners provided transport assistance, helped families establish themselves in the receiving camp, and attempted to maintain continuity of services (education, health care, food distribution) through the transition. However, the process was inevitably shaped by declining budgets and staff reductions as donor attention shifted to other global crises.

The Remaining Refugees

The most difficult aspect of the consolidation and closure process was the fate of refugees who did not depart through the resettlement program. At the peak of the camp system, over 108,000 registered refugees lived in the seven settlements. The resettlement program successfully relocated approximately 113,000 Bhutanese refugees (a figure that includes refugees registered in camps, those in India, and some who had been living informally in Nepal). However, several thousand individuals remained.

The remaining population fell into several overlapping categories. First, there were those who had actively chosen not to resettle, either because they remained committed to the goal of repatriation to Bhutan or because they did not wish to move to a foreign country — a group that included many elderly refugees for whom the prospect of starting over in the United States or Australia at age 60 or 70 was overwhelming. Second, there were individuals and families whose cases had been rejected by resettlement countries, often due to security screening failures, medical inadmissibility, or discrepancies in biographical data. Third, there were people who had been classified during various verification exercises as non-Bhutanese or whose documentation was incomplete or contradictory.^[4]

Fourth, and most poignantly, there were individuals who had simply been left behind — people with mental health conditions, disabilities, or social isolation who had not navigated the bureaucratic complexity of the resettlement process and had no family members to advocate for them. The humanitarian system, despite its best efforts, was not designed to reach everyone, and the most vulnerable were often the last served.

Local Integration and Uncertain Futures

The question of local integration — granting remaining Bhutanese refugees some form of legal status in Nepal — emerged as the primary alternative durable solution as camp closures progressed. UNHCR advocated for Nepal to provide permanent residency or a pathway to citizenship for refugees who wished to remain. However, Nepal was reluctant to set a precedent that might attract future refugee flows or provoke political backlash from citizens who viewed the refugee population as competitors for scarce resources.

In practice, many remaining refugees achieved a form of de facto integration. They found informal employment, married Nepali citizens, enrolled their children in Nepali schools, and gradually blended into the host communities of the Terai. Their legal status remained ambiguous — they were not recognized as Nepali citizens and did not possess identity documents that would entitle them to government services, property ownership, or formal employment. This legal limbo, while preferable to life in a closed camp, left them vulnerable to exploitation and excluded from the protections of citizenship.

Bhutan, for its part, showed no willingness to accept the return of any refugees, regardless of their documented Bhutanese nationality. The government maintained its position that those who had left had done so voluntarily and had forfeited their right to return. Periodic diplomatic gestures — including vague statements about Bhutan's willingness to consider the return of "genuine Bhutanese" — produced no concrete action and were widely viewed as performative.^[5]

Dismantling and Memory

The physical dismantling of the camps erased virtually all material traces of the communities that had existed for three decades. Bamboo shelters were taken apart and the materials salvaged or discarded. Water infrastructure was removed or handed over to local communities. School buildings were demolished or repurposed. The land, leased from Nepali landowners, returned to rice cultivation and other agricultural use. Within a few years of closure, the camp sites were nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding farmland.

For the global Bhutanese diaspora, the closure of the camps was an event of profound symbolic significance. The camps had been, simultaneously, places of suffering and places of community — the setting for the most formative experiences of an entire generation. Their erasure from the physical landscape intensified the importance of memory, oral history, and community storytelling as means of preserving the refugee experience for future generations. Organizations like the Bhutanese community associations in resettlement countries have undertaken efforts to document camp life through photography archives, oral history projects, and commemorative events.

References

1. UNHCR. "Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal: Comprehensive Solutions." https://www.unhcr.org/asia/bhutanese-refugees
2. International Organization for Migration (IOM). "Bhutanese Refugee Resettlement: Programme Report." 2015. https://www.iom.int/bhutanese-refugees
3. UNHCR Nepal. "Nepal Factsheet." 2023. https://www.unhcr.org/countries/nepal
4. Amnesty International. "Bhutan: Nationality, Expulsion, and the Right to Return." Updated briefing, 2015.
5. International Crisis Group. "Bhutan: Between Two Giants." Asia Report No. 204, April 2011.

Contributed by Anonymous Contributor, Syracuse NY