Inside The Bhutanese Refugee Camps Of Nepal

BELDANGI, NEPAL - MARCH 14: Dal Bahadur Gajner (right), 74 years old, and his son, Dev Kumar Gajner (left), 34 years old, pose while sitting in their jewellery shop inside the Beldangi 2 refugee camp on March 14, 2015 in Beldangi, Nepal. Dal arrived in the refugee camp in 1991. He had worked in the family jewellery shop in Bhutan and he taught his son as his father had also taught him. They are waiting to be resettled in the USA where they would love to carry on their family business. More than 22,000 Bhutanese refugees still reside in the refugee camps set up in Nepal in the 1990s, after hundreds of thousands of Bhutanese fled the country following a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Bhutanese Government against the country's ethnic Nepali population. After more than 20 years in Nepal, over 90% of the refugees have been successfully resettled in third countries, thanks to programs by UNHCR and IOM. Those remaining the camps are supported by several organizations that undertake a wide variety of projects. Helped by remittances sent back to Nepal by families already resettled in other countries, the refugees still in the camps have set up their own small businesses in the camps and the roads near them, roads which are also replete with Nepali-owned businesses who benefit directly from the refugees that are still waiting in Nepal to be resettled in third countries. (Photo by Omar Havana/Getty Images)