Latest news with #Lhotshampa
Time of India
3 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Ejected from US, rejected by Bhutan and Nepal: Himalayan refugees face statelessness
More than two dozen Bhutanese refugees who were forcibly deported from the United States this spring, in a move that stunned resettled communities across America, have found themselves in devastating legal limbo after Bhutan refused to accept them upon arrival. Instead of a homecoming, the deportees were rejected at the border, leaving them stateless and adrift—most now confined once again to refugee camps in Nepal . Nepal has said it cannot grant these refugees legal status and is in negotiations with the US government for a possible solution, but so far, no country has agreed to offer citizenship or permanent refuge. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Select a Course Category Public Policy Design Thinking Cybersecurity Artificial Intelligence MCA Degree Others Data Science healthcare Leadership CXO Finance Product Management Digital Marketing PGDM Operations Management others Management Data Analytics Data Science MBA Project Management Healthcare Technology Skills you'll gain: Economics for Public Policy Making Quantitative Techniques Public & Project Finance Law, Health & Urban Development Policy Duration: 12 Months IIM Kozhikode Professional Certificate Programme in Public Policy Management Starts on Mar 3, 2024 Get Details Skills you'll gain: Duration: 12 Months IIM Calcutta Executive Programme in Public Policy and Management Starts on undefined Get Details Who are the refugees? The affected are primarily Lhotshampa , a Nepali-speaking ethnic minority forcibly driven out of Bhutan in the 1990s. Over 100,000 were housed in sprawling camps in eastern Nepal, and beginning in 2007, many resettled in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK as part of a UN-led solution. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Smart Indians use these 5 WhatsApp tricks google Learn More Undo Ramesh Sanyasi, 24 was born in the Beldangi refugee camp in Nepal and migrated legally to the United States at age 10, becoming part of Pennsylvania's vibrant Bhutanese resettled community. He worked at an Amazon warehouse, hoping to build a stable future. Everything changed after a night out with friends led to his arrest for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and providing false identification, according to court records. After serving an eight-month sentence, he was abruptly deported in April 2025: first to New Delhi, and then flown to Paro, Bhutan. Live Events Upon arrival in Bhutan, Sanyasi and two others were not welcomed—they were instead transported to the border with India. Bhutanese authorities handed each of them 30,000 Indian rupees (about $350) and arranged for someone to ferry them to Panitanki, a town on the India-Nepal border. There, the deportees paid smugglers to secretly cross the Mechi River back into Nepal, returning to the very refugee camp Ramesh had left more than a decade earlier. 'Life here is tough. I'm living without any identification documents, which makes everything challenging. I can't even withdraw money sent by relatives because I lack proper ID,' he told CNN . 'For now, I'm surviving on money sent from the US, but once that runs out, I don't know what will happen.' Why were they deported? Most, like Sanyasi, were not undocumented but lost their visas due to criminal convictions—sometimes minor, sometimes more severe—under US law. Many completed their sentences before deportation, but once expelled, found themselves returned to countries that neither recognize their citizenship nor accept their return. At least 30 Bhutanese refugees have been deported by the US to Bhutan so far, all legally admitted to the US as children under a UN-led resettlement program. All deportees so far have been expelled again at the Bhutan border, given cash, and left to fend for themselves in India and, for most, eventually smuggled into Nepal. According to Gopal Krishna Siwakoti , president of the International Institute for Human Rights, Environment and Development, many deportees are in hiding; some in Nepal, some still lost in India. Four deportees have now been threatened with a second deportation—this time from Nepal, where they were arrested for illegally crossing the border. However, Nepal's Department of Immigration admits there is nowhere for them to go: 'We are in a dilemma: the US is unlikely to accept them back, and deporting them to Bhutan is not straightforward either,' said department director Tikaram Dhakal. Life in limbo: The camps of eastern Nepal For those who remain or have returned to the camps, mostly the elderly or infirm, conditions have evolved: electricity and running water are now present in places like Beldangi Camp, but the end of international aid has led to increased vulnerability, exploitation, and fear of detention. Informal work is the norm, but for many, legal protections are non-existent. Political stalemate Efforts for repatriation have repeatedly stalled. Neither Bhutan nor Nepal is party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention , complicating formal policy frameworks. Bhutan continues to resist accepting its former citizens, and recent years have seen the exposure of a fraudulent refugee registration scandal, further eroding trust and muddying advocacy efforts. Diplomatic conversations have inched forward—Nepal announced renewed talks with Bhutan in 2023, but significant progress remains elusive. India, a key regional power, remains a reluctant participant in mediation, and international pressure on Bhutan has waned. Q. What allowed thousands of Bhutanese refugees to move to the United States? Most Bhutanese refugees moved to the US through a UNHCR and IOM-backed Third Country Resettlement Programme launched in 2007. The US first pledged to take up to 60,000 refugees from Nepali camps, later increasing to more than 80,000, the largest single-country intake. Resettlement was based on refugee status and need, not skills, and included other partner countries—over 100,000 Bhutanese were resettled globally by 2015. Q. What is the UN Refugee Convention, and why is it important? The 1951 UN Refugee Convention is a major international treaty that defines refugee rights and the duties of signatory nations. It guarantees non-refoulement (protection from forced return), and the rights to legal status, work, education, and due process. This Convention sets a standard for how refugees are to be protected and integrated by member countries, ensuring basic security and legal recognition. Q. How does Nepal and Bhutan not joining the Convention affect refugees? Because Nepal and Bhutan are not signatories, refugees there lack international legal protections—such as the right to residency, documents, protection from deportation, or legal employment. There's no obligation for local integration or citizenship, keeping refugees in prolonged limbo. Legal rights and policies are governed solely by domestic law, leaving refugees vulnerable to changing policies and without international recourse.
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First Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- First Post
Deported to nowhere: Bhutan rejects refugees US sent back, it's a story of Lhotshampas
More than two dozen refugees from Bhutan were left in a limbo after they were deported from the US to their home country, but the Himalayan nation rejected them, leaving them stuck in a refugee camp in Nepal. read more More than two dozen refugees from Bhutan were left in a limbo after they were deported from the US to their home country, but the Himalayan nation rejected them, leaving them stuck in a refugee camp in Nepal. According to a CNN report, refugees from Lhotshampa, a Nepali-speaking ethnic minority, were denied entry to Bhutan after they were deported from the United States. The ethnic minority group was expelled from Bhutan back in the 1990s. After spending decades in refugee camps, more than 100,000 of them were legally resettled in countries like the US, Australia, Canada and other nations. The process took place under a UN-led program that commenced back in 2007. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Until very recently, the United States had not deported a single person to Bhutan in years. One of the main reasons behind this is the fact that the Bhutanese government have been unwilling to repatriate its refugees, who were stripped of their citizenship when they fled. This technically leaves them stateless. Deported to nowhere According to CNN, since March, more than two dozen Lhotshampa have been deported from the US back to Bhutan. However, the Himalayan nation is still refusing to take them in, and they had to settle in refugee camps set up in Nepal. Many deportees told CNN that they are now back in refugee camps where they lived as children. One of the deportees told the American news outlet that he was put on a one-way flight to New Delhi, India, then to Paro, Bhutan. When he arrived in Bhutan, the country's local authorities took him and two other refugees to the border with India. The deportee recalled that the Bhutanese authorities paid 'someone' to take the refugees to Panitanki, a town on the India-Nepal border, giving the deportees 30,000 Indian rupees (about $350) each. The refugee admitted that he and the others paid someone to smuggle them across the Mechi River into Nepal. Most of the refugees find themselves in a diplomatic grey zone, with no documentation for either the US, Bhutan or Nepal, where many are currently residing. While all this is taking place, four of the US deportees have now been ordered deported by a second country, after they were arrested and briefly detained by the Nepali government for illegally crossing the border. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD However, Tikaram Dhakal, the director of Nepal's Department of Immigration, told CNN that the country has nowhere to deport the refugees. 'We are in a dilemma: the US is unlikely to accept them back, and deporting them to Bhutan is not straightforward either," he told the American news outlet. Hence, these deportees are still stuck in Nepalese refugee camps with no country they can call their home. Bhutan's crackdown on ethnic minorities Bhutan, a small Buddhist kingdom, houses 800,000 people. While the country is known for peace and tranquillity, it has a dark history of crackdowns on ethnic minorities. In the late 1970s, the government of Bhutan began cracking down on ethnic Nepalis who had migrated to southern Bhutan in the 19th century by introducing discriminatory policies. In 1989, the government pushed its ambition to 'Bhutanise' the country by enforcing a dress code and outrightly banning the Nepali language. Anyone who resisted faced abuse, threats and coercion in the country. Adhering to international law, the US did not send someone to a country where they could be persecuted; in this case, it was Bhutan. However, the Trump administration's recent crackdown on immigration has led to the deportation of people to states with grave human rights records, such as Libya and South Sudan. Under pressure of tariffs, some countries are accepting deportees, but Bhutan has refused to receive Lhotshampa refugees. Interestingly, the Himalayan nation was initially included in a draft 'red' list prepared by US diplomatic and security officials of 11 countries whose citizens would be barred from entering the US. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The draft was initially published in March by The New York Times. However, when the final list of 19 countries with full or partial travel bans was released in June, Bhutan was not included. Hence, it is still unclear where the Trump administration stands with Bhutan on the issue.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Forced from Bhutan, deported by the US: these stateless Himalayan people are in a unique limbo
More than two dozen refugees from Bhutan have been left in a unique legal limbo after they were deported by the US back to the tiny Himalayan nation they once fled – only for it to reject them a second time. The refugees are Lhotshampa, a Nepali-speaking ethnic minority who were expelled from Bhutan in the 1990s. After decades in refugee camps in eastern Nepal, more than 100,000 of them were legally resettled in the US, Australia, Canada and other countries under a UN-led program that began in 2007. Until very recently, the US had not deported a single person to Bhutan in years, according to data from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), because the Bhutanese government was unwilling to repatriate its refugees, who were stripped of their citizenship when they fled. But since March, more than two dozen Lhotshampa have been deported from the US back to Bhutan – though the country is still refusing to take them in, according to several deportees, advocates and the Nepali government. Many have ended up back in the same Nepal refugee camps where as children they dreamed of a better life abroad. Ramesh Sanyasi, 24, was born in a refugee camp and migrated to the US when he was 10 years old with his parents and older sister. Sanyasi was living in Pennsylvania, a hub for refugees from Bhutan, and working in an Amazon warehouse until last year, when he said he was arrested while borrowing his friend's car during a night out. Sanyasi was convicted of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and handing false ID to law enforcement, court records show. In April of this year, after spending eight months in jail, Sanyasi said he was put on a one-way flight to New Delhi, India, then to Paro, Bhutan. When he arrived in Bhutan, he said, local authorities took him and two other refugees to the border with India, where they paid someone to take the men to Panitanki, a town on the India-Nepal border, giving the deportees 30,000 Indian rupees (about $350) each. Sanyasi said he and the other deportees paid someone to smuggle them across the Mechi River into Nepal. 'Life here is tough. I'm living without any identification documents, which makes everything challenging. I can't even withdraw money sent by relatives because I lack proper ID,' Sanyasi told CNN in an interview from Beldangi refugee camp, where he is now staying. 'My days are spent idly, with no clear purpose or direction,' Sanyasi said. 'For now, I'm surviving on money sent from the US, but once that runs out, I don't know what will happen.' His sister, mother and father all remain in the US. Sanyasi and the other deportees were not undocumented and came to the US legally. Most – if not all – have been convicted of crimes of varying severity, though many served their full sentences before being deported. Under US law, non-citizens can lose their visas if convicted of certain crimes. They now find themselves in an extraordinary diplomatic gray zone, with no documentation for either the US, Bhutan or Nepal, where many are currently residing. Gopal Krishna Siwakoti, Nepal-based president of the International Institute for Human Rights, Environment and Development, estimates 30 people have been deported by the US to Bhutan so far, while at least two dozen more are in detention facilities awaiting deportation. All the refugees deported to Bhutan were expelled to India once they arrived, Siwakoti said. Most of them made their way to Nepal, though some are still in India. Many are in hiding, he said. Four of the US deportees have now been ordered deported by a second country, after they were arrested and briefly detained by the Nepali government for crossing the border illegally. However, Tikaram Dhakal, the director of Nepal's Department of Immigration, told CNN it has nowhere to deport these people. 'We are in a dilemma: the US is unlikely to accept them back, and deporting them to Bhutan is not straightforward either.' Nowhere to go Bhutan, a small Buddhist kingdom of roughly 800,000 nestled between India and Tibet in the Himalayas, is often revered for its sustainable approach to tourism and national happiness index, but it has a dark history of crackdowns on ethnic minorities. In the late 1970s, the government of Bhutan began cracking down on ethnic Nepalis who had migrated to southern Bhutan in the 19th century, introducing a series of discriminatory policies designed to exclude Lhotshampa. From 1989, the government pushed the 'Bhutanization' of the country by enforcing a dress code and banning the Nepali language, aggressively clamping down on anyone who resisted. Faced with abuse, threats and coercion, the Lhotshampa fled. It has long been a bedrock of US and international law not to send someone to a country where they could face persecution. But the administration of US President Donald Trump has increasingly deported people to states with grave human rights records, such as Libya and South Sudan. Siwakoti said it was a 'mistake on the part of the US government' to deport the Lhotshampa back to Bhutan, 'because these people don't have a country.' 'These people's belonging, their existence, their ownership of the country, was completely written off – formally, legally – by the Royal Government of Bhutan,' Siwakoti said. 'They became completely stateless.' Bhutan has refused to receive Lhotshampa refugees. But during Trump's presidency, countries that have historically accepted few – if any – deportees from the US are now opening their doors, under pressure of sanctions and tariffs. Bhutan was initially included in a draft 'red' list prepared by US diplomatic and security officials of 11 countries whose citizens would be barred from entering the US, which was published in March by The New York Times. But when the final list of 19 countries targeted for full or partial travel bans was released in June, Bhutan was not included. The first deportation flight from the US to Bhutan was at the end of March. Siwakoti said he believes Bhutan accepted the deportees to appease the US, but never intended to let them stay. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from CNN. A US State Department spokesperson said it would not discuss its diplomatic communications with other governments. 'Foreign governments will make decisions regarding the immigration status of aliens removed from the United States in accordance with their respective domestic laws and international obligations,' the spokesperson said. CNN was unable to reach Bhutan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment. The Consulate of Bhutan in New York did not respond to an email request from CNN. Dhakal, the Nepali government official, said Nepal cannot accept the refugees and is currently in discussions with the US government to come up with a solution. 'Family separation is not a solution' The Beldangi camp looks different from when Ashish Subedi last lived here a decade ago. There is electricity; his father's bamboo hut is now fortified with metal; and running water comes from a tap, rather than a well. Dogs, cows and chickens roam the dusty roads. Subedi never imagined he would be back here, in the same place where he and his family took refuge years ago. Subedi was convicted of a felony sexual offense in Ohio in 2022, according to court records, and served his two-year sentence before he was deported back to Bhutan in March. He is among the deportees who were arrested by Nepali authorities, though they were eventually released from detention after Subedi's father filed a habeas corpus petition with Nepal's Supreme Court. Without travel documents, it is unlikely he and the others will be expelled from Nepal anytime soon. In the meantime, the government is not permitting them to leave the refugee camps. 'We are living in darkness, with no clear path forward,' Subedi told CNN. 'The lack of documentation and restricted movement make it nearly impossible to rebuild our lives. We feel trapped, with limited options and a constant sense of insecurity.' Subedi said he hopes to return to the US, where his wife and 3-year-old daughter still live. 'Being sent back to Bhutan is not an option for us – it would likely mean imprisonment,' he said. Back in the US, the recent deportations have sent shock waves through communities of Bhutanese refugees. Tilak Niroula, a refugee and community leader in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said Bhutanese refugees have embraced life in the US and laid down roots there. 'Since we were forcefully evicted from Bhutan, and we do not have a country to call home, we call this country, the US, our home,' he said. Niroula said he and other advocates want anyone who commits a crime to face justice – but insists deportation isn't the answer. 'If somebody got involved in any kind of criminal activities, we do have a due process,' he said. 'Family separation is not a solution.' Solve the daily Crossword
CNN
4 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Forced from Bhutan, deported by the US: these stateless Himalayan people are in a unique limbo
More than two dozen refugees from Bhutan have been left in a unique legal limbo after they were deported by the US back to the tiny Himalayan nation they once fled – only for it to reject them a second time. The refugees are Lhotshampa, a Nepali-speaking ethnic minority who were expelled from Bhutan in the 1990s. After decades in refugee camps in eastern Nepal, more than 100,000 of them were legally resettled in the US, Australia, Canada and other countries under a UN-led program that began in 2007. Until very recently, the US had not deported a single person to Bhutan in years, according to data from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), because the Bhutanese government was unwilling to repatriate its refugees, who were stripped of their citizenship when they fled. But since March, more than two dozen Lhotshampa have been deported from the US back to Bhutan – though the country is still refusing to take them in, according to several deportees, advocates and the Nepali government. Many have ended up back in the same Nepal refugee camps where as children they dreamed of a better life abroad. Ramesh Sanyasi, 24, was born in a refugee camp and migrated to the US when he was 10 years old with his parents and older sister. Sanyasi was living in Pennsylvania, a hub for refugees from Bhutan, and working in an Amazon warehouse until last year, when he said he was arrested while borrowing his friend's car during a night out. Sanyasi was convicted of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and handing false ID to law enforcement, court records show. In April of this year, after spending eight months in jail, Sanyasi said he was put on a one-way flight to New Delhi, India, then to Paro, Bhutan. When he arrived in Bhutan, he said, local authorities took him and two other refugees to the border with India, where they paid someone to take the men to Panitanki, a town on the India-Nepal border, giving the deportees 30,000 Indian rupees (about $350) each. Sanyasi said he and the other deportees paid someone to smuggle them across the Mechi River into Nepal. 'Life here is tough. I'm living without any identification documents, which makes everything challenging. I can't even withdraw money sent by relatives because I lack proper ID,' Sanyasi told CNN in an interview from Beldangi refugee camp, where he is now staying. 'My days are spent idly, with no clear purpose or direction,' Sanyasi said. 'For now, I'm surviving on money sent from the US, but once that runs out, I don't know what will happen.' His sister, mother and father all remain in the US. Sanyasi and the other deportees were not undocumented and came to the US legally. Most – if not all – have been convicted of crimes of varying severity, though many served their full sentences before being deported. Under US law, non-citizens can lose their visas if convicted of certain crimes. They now find themselves in an extraordinary diplomatic gray zone, with no documentation for either the US, Bhutan or Nepal, where many are currently residing. Gopal Krishna Siwakoti, Nepal-based president of the International Institute for Human Rights, Environment and Development, estimates 30 people have been deported by the US to Bhutan so far, while at least two dozen more are in detention facilities awaiting deportation. All the refugees deported to Bhutan were expelled to India once they arrived, Siwakoti said. Most of them made their way to Nepal, though some are still in India. Many are in hiding, he said. Four of the US deportees have now been ordered deported by a second country, after they were arrested and briefly detained by the Nepali government for crossing the border illegally. However, Tikaram Dhakal, the director of Nepal's Department of Immigration, told CNN it has nowhere to deport these people. 'We are in a dilemma: the US is unlikely to accept them back, and deporting them to Bhutan is not straightforward either.' Bhutan, a small Buddhist kingdom of roughly 800,000 nestled between India and Tibet in the Himalayas, is often revered for its sustainable approach to tourism and national happiness index, but it has a dark history of crackdowns on ethnic minorities. In the late 1970s, the government of Bhutan began cracking down on ethnic Nepalis who had migrated to southern Bhutan in the 19th century, introducing a series of discriminatory policies designed to exclude Lhotshampa. From 1989, the government pushed the 'Bhutanization' of the country by enforcing a dress code and banning the Nepali language, aggressively clamping down on anyone who resisted. Faced with abuse, threats and coercion, the Lhotshampa fled. It has long been a bedrock of US and international law not to send someone to a country where they could face persecution. But the administration of US President Donald Trump has increasingly deported people to states with grave human rights records, such as Libya and South Sudan. Siwakoti said it was a 'mistake on the part of the US government' to deport the Lhotshampa back to Bhutan, 'because these people don't have a country.' 'These people's belonging, their existence, their ownership of the country, was completely written off – formally, legally – by the Royal Government of Bhutan,' Siwakoti said. 'They became completely stateless.' Bhutan has refused to receive Lhotshampa refugees. But during Trump's presidency, countries that have historically accepted few – if any – deportees from the US are now opening their doors, under pressure of sanctions and tariffs. Bhutan was initially included in a draft 'red' list prepared by US diplomatic and security officials of 11 countries whose citizens would be barred from entering the US, which was published in March by The New York Times. But when the final list of 19 countries targeted for full or partial travel bans was released in June, Bhutan was not included. The first deportation flight from the US to Bhutan was at the end of March. Siwakoti said he believes Bhutan accepted the deportees to appease the US, but never intended to let them stay. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from CNN. A US State Department spokesperson said it would not discuss its diplomatic communications with other governments. 'Foreign governments will make decisions regarding the immigration status of aliens removed from the United States in accordance with their respective domestic laws and international obligations,' the spokesperson said. CNN was unable to reach Bhutan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment. The Consulate of Bhutan in New York did not respond to an email request from CNN. Dhakal, the Nepali government official, said Nepal cannot accept the refugees and is currently in discussions with the US government to come up with a solution. The Beldangi camp looks different from when Ashish Subedi last lived here a decade ago. There is electricity; his father's bamboo hut is now fortified with metal; and running water comes from a tap, rather than a well. Dogs, cows and chickens roam the dusty roads. Subedi never imagined he would be back here, in the same place where he and his family took refuge years ago. Subedi was convicted of a felony sexual offense in Ohio in 2022, according to court records, and served his two-year sentence before he was deported back to Bhutan in March. He is among the deportees who were arrested by Nepali authorities, though they were eventually released from detention after Subedi's father filed a habeas corpus petition with Nepal's Supreme Court. Without travel documents, it is unlikely he and the others will be expelled from Nepal anytime soon. In the meantime, the government is not permitting them to leave the refugee camps. 'We are living in darkness, with no clear path forward,' Subedi told CNN. 'The lack of documentation and restricted movement make it nearly impossible to rebuild our lives. We feel trapped, with limited options and a constant sense of insecurity.' Subedi said he hopes to return to the US, where his wife and 3-year-old daughter still live. 'Being sent back to Bhutan is not an option for us – it would likely mean imprisonment,' he said. Back in the US, the recent deportations have sent shock waves through communities of Bhutanese refugees. Tilak Niroula, a refugee and community leader in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, said Bhutanese refugees have embraced life in the US and laid down roots there. 'Since we were forcefully evicted from Bhutan, and we do not have a country to call home, we call this country, the US, our home,' he said. Niroula said he and other advocates want anyone who commits a crime to face justice – but insists deportation isn't the answer. 'If somebody got involved in any kind of criminal activities, we do have a due process,' he said. 'Family separation is not a solution.'
The Wire
20-06-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
Refuge Without a Name: South Asia's Architecture of Statelessness
Across South Asia, refugee movements have become one of the quietest yet most consequential forces shaping the region's political and security terrain. From Assam to the Arakan, from the Himalayan ridges of Bhutan to the shrinking mangroves of Bengal, people have crossed borders not in pursuit of safety but in search of recognition. Displacement here is not the residue of war, it is often the intention of peace. Bureaucratically crafted, legally disguised, rhetorically justified. The blueprint of this architecture was drawn in 1947. But its foundations were laid long before. The colonial state had already tested the logic of exclusion: pass laws, criminal tribe registries, vagrancy codes. It taught the postcolonial state how to document without protection, to survey without rights, to govern through absence. uprooted over 15 million people in a frenzy of postcolonial violence. That rupture did not end with the ceasefires; it rehearsed, refined, and rehearsed again, until exclusion became policy masquerading as nationhood. It institutionalised the belief that borders could manufacture belonging through exclusion, that citizenship could be both inherited and revoked. What began as a line across a subcontinent became a template for expulsion. Since then, South Asia's map has been redrawn repeatedly, through secession, civil war, monarchy's fall, proxy insurgencies, demographic engineering. Each upheaval displaced its own cast of undesirables. The birth of sent ten million refugees into India. Bhutan's campaign of national purification expelled the Lhotshampa. The Sri Lankan scattered Tamils from Tamil Nadu to Toronto. turned Pakistan into a refugee depot. Myanmar's were erased from citizenship and hunted by their state. India's National Register of Citizens (NRC) sought to vanish the undocumented by redefining who had the right to exist, on paper. Every decade, a new group of refugees joins the ledger Every decade, a new group joins the ledger. Their languages differ. The cause of exile changes. But the experience remains the same: move, wait, disappear. These are not episodic tragedies. They are the architecture of exclusion, calibrated, systemic, and sanctioned. Today, an estimated 3.5 million refugees live in South Asia, just 0.18% of its population. But numbers miss the point. The real story lies in the normalisation of statelessness: how expulsion becomes policy, how documentation becomes a weapon, how silence becomes law. Nowhere is this more visible than in Assam, where the past returned with . India's Home Minister called undocumented Bangladeshis '.' The metaphor was not casual. It naturalised exclusion, turned people into pests, and made denial feel like hygiene. The NRC asked people to prove, with brittle papers, that they were Indian. Nearly two million could not. Among them, many had never known any other home. But even as the state prepared to unwrite them, something softer but no less stubborn emerged: a quiet resistance. In villages across Assam, neighbours pooled documents, drafted affidavits, shared what proof they could find. Volunteers taught the elderly how to speak for themselves before tribunals. Lawyers filed petitions not to win, but to delay erasure. It wasn't enough. But for a moment, it was refusal. The law offered no clarity on what would happen next, only that something would. Entire families, by a signature. The question was never really about borders. It was about belonging. of the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampas, once woven into its agricultural spine, followed a similar logic. The state decided it needed to look more like itself. Ethnic Nepalis who had lived there for generations were asked to prove loyalty with papers few possessed. When they failed, they were declared alien. The language was legal. The motive, demographic. The method: cultural cleansing through policy. Camps took root in eastern Nepal. They lingered for two decades, until foreign planes carried many away. The region moved on, leaving its displaced to histories few would remember and fewer still would write down. Not all displacement is marked by tents. In Myanmar, the Rohingya were removed not just from land, but from law. The 1982 Citizenship Act left them stateless. The military's 2017 campaign drove 700,000 into Bangladesh. became a city of waiting; a million people with nowhere to go, and no way to belong. The world flew drones, delivered aid, hosted conferences. The camps grew, hemmed by wire. The tarpaulin roofs became symbols of permanence. In one of the camps, where the tarpaulin walls pulsed with heat by day and damp by dawn, a girl knelt in the corner of her shelter and traced her name into the fabric. Over and over, she pressed her finger into the weave, as if to keep it from slipping. She had never seen it written. Her name lived in breath, recited at checkpoints, repeated for clerks, forgotten in silence. In a place built from waiting, this was the only record she could make: a movement, a murmur, gone with the morning damp. South Asia does not declare its expulsions, it enacts them, quietly Sri Lanka's civil war drove tens of thousands of Tamils into India. Many still remain in limbo, neither citizens of Sri Lanka nor fully recognised by India. They inhabit the fault lines of memory, war, and neglect. Even in Tamil Nadu, the state most sympathetic to their cause, the word 'citizenship' catches in the throat. Others moved further still. In Canada, in the UK, in Australia, fragments of that exile found new ground. Statelessness dispersed into diaspora, sometimes remembered, sometimes ritualised, sometimes recast. Some funded movements. Others tried to forget. A few carried the war within them: across borders, into basements, through births and funerals, across decades. Pakistan's Afghan hosting has turned from geopolitical leverage to domestic burden. In Karachi, Afghan families who arrived in the 1980s still live in the shadows, on the margins of neighborhoods built by others. Their names are absent from the census. Their children inherit liminality like property. Some fought Pakistan's wars. Others built shops and futures on borrowed ground. South Asia does not declare its expulsions. It enacts them, quietly, bureaucratically, sometimes with courtesy, more often with silence. The refugee is rarely called one. He is an infiltrator in one country, a voter in another, a ghost in records that were never digitised. In Delhi, Tibetan flags hang from second-story windows, folded, cautious, half-visible. The refugee here is suspended in plain sight, not unseen, but unclaimed, between exile and embrace, between hospitality and the hush of hesitation. Across the region, borders have become mirrors, each reflecting stories the state would rather forget. Words follow policy. The vocabulary of welcome has expiry built in. And the words that remain - alien, illegal, suspect - shape what follows: detention, denial, disappearance. The refugee becomes shorthand for disorder. For dilution. For danger. Rarely for history. Rarely for justice. Also Read: From Balochistan to Kashmir, the Region's Unresolved Grievances Refuse To Stay Buried Language is never neutral. It becomes architecture, brick by bureaucratic brick, affidavit by affidavit, silence by silence. In speeches and televised declarations, the refugee shifts from someone who lost protection to someone who must be monitored. In India, the term – intruder - echoes through everyday speech. 'Each is a threat to the nation,' the Home Minister thundered in 2018, drawing applause and lines deeper than any border wall. Even South Asia's moments of magnanimity have not translated into permanence. India's hospitality to Tibetans has endured, but few have been offered citizenship. Bangladesh shelters over a million Rohingya, but the political vocabulary frames them as guests overstaying their welcome. Pakistan's have become political flashpoints. The language of protection erodes with each electoral cycle. South Asia has no refugee convention. No regional asylum framework. No mutual recognition system. Protection is not a right, it is a favour. Refugees are logistical problems, not political subjects. None of the region's principal states are signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its . The UNHCR is allowed to operate, not empowered to enforce. Statelessness becomes a feature of sovereignty, not a failure of it. Laws shape the absence of rights as much as their presence. In leaving them behind, the region sketches a different kind of map, one where citizenship is conditional, belonging revocable, protection dictated by whim. The refugee is not the exception. He is the evidence. What happens at the border does not begin there. It begins in speech, in silence, in statute. What begins in silence ends in disappearance. The crisis ahead And the tide is rising. The crisis ahead will not be driven by war alone. Environmental degradation will multiply displacement. Rivers swell. Coasts recede. The are becoming a geography of waiting. They retreat inland, inch by inch. Communities follow. Villages drown, slowly, bureaucratically. Himalayan melt and glacier ruptures threaten entire valleys. This isn't tomorrow's crisis. It is today's reality. The land is sinking while policy treads water. These people are not yet called refugees. But they will be. In the Maldives, the a little more each year. No refugee camps have formed, yet. Only models, projections, and a growing fear that someday soon, even the memory of return will feel fictional. The region's smallest state may soon become its loudest metaphor. To watch this region is to witness a quiet reconstitution of belonging. Citizenship is redrawn by ancestry. Rights are filtered through religion. Bureaucracy the border. Today, exclusion is no longer stamped, it is scanned. In places like India, the Aadhaar system has made identity digital, and disappearance easier. Refugees are not simply those who have lost a country. They are reminders that nations can also lose their people, one document, one silence at a time. Global comparisons do little to flatter South Asia. The EU's asylum system is contested but codified. Africa's Kampala Convention acknowledges the displaced within borders. Latin America's Cartagena Declaration expands protections. South Asia has no such moral vocabulary, only the grammar of delay. Also Read: Fighting Terrorism Demands Partnership, Not Primacy The international community treats this displacement as static. The world has grown accustomed to the camp, but not to the cause. It funds containment as if mercy were enough, and forgets that recognition, not rations, is the measure of justice. Aid flows. Resettlement trickles. The architecture endures. Host states perform hospitality but deny permanence. Across South Asia, refugee governance is not built for permanence. This is not a failure of resources. It is a blueprint. It is a waiting room with no exit, where time is suspended and return is myth. Refugees are not the fallout of collapse alone, but of intent, of someone deciding who belonged, and who did not. Displacement here is not a crisis. It is a . The refugee is not the aberration; he is not the exception, but the system's most faithful creation. For too long, the region has redrawn its maps, of territory, memory, citizenship, while erasing those it first cast out. When return is impossible, memory becomes the last homeland: fragile, portable, and haunted. Refugees carry their histories. Sometimes, they carry their wars. They may leave the battlefield, but the battle does not leave them. Wounds travel. And where they are ignored, they deepen. They are not stranded between countries; they are disowned by the very lands that once claimed them, named, then unmade. That alone should remind us that displacement begins not with movement, but with abandonment. If the world is serious about reducing forced migration, it must do more than feed the symptom. It must confront the sovereign impulse to erase. What's needed is a politics that names the displaced not as burden, but as evidence, of what states deny, and what justice demands. Statelessness is not sovereignty's accident. It is its design, and its deepest cruelty. Until that is reversed, borders will remain: not as protections, but as the quiet scars of decisions made, and never confessed. Somewhere, another border will be drawn. And somewhere else, someone will vanish into it. Shyam Tekwani is a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. 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