Remittances of 2.5 billion dollars make up Afghanistan’s entire national budget.

Richard O’Regan reports from Tehran.

There are estimates of 16 million total refugees and asylum seekers living throughout the world. Refugees fall under the responsibility of different global agencies. There are 10.5 million refugees under the auspices of UNHCR, while UNRWA has responsibility for the estimated 4.7 million Palestinian refugees.

Image courtesy of UNHCR.

Four-fifths of all refugees come from the developed world and almost half of all refugees under UNHCR’s responsibility are from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to UNHCR, one out of every four refugees in the world is from Afghanistan.

It is estimated that half of the world’s refugees are living in urban areas, while one-third live in refugee camps, according to the UNHCR. Africa and Asia contribute the most the numbers of refugees, as shown in the graphic above.

See UNHCR’s full 2009 Global Trends report for more information.

Pakistan is host to the largest number of refugees worldwide (1.8 million), followed by the Syria (1.1 million) and Iran (980,000).

There were 16 countries that reported allowing the resettlement of some 88,000 refugees in 2008, according to government reports. The United States accepted the highest number of refugees (60,200). In addition, 604,000 refugees voluntarily returned to their home countries in 2008.

Image courtesy of UNHCR.

According to UNHCR there were 827,000 asylum seekers in 2008.

Image courtesy of UNHCR.

Throughout the world, there are an estimated 26 million internally displaced persons. IDPs generally flee their homes for the same reasons as refugees (armed conflict, human rights violations and war), but they remain within their native country and are technically protected by the law of that country.

For an excellent, detailed explanation of global human displacement, look at the Guardian’s map.

Khan explains how 40 million people are uprooted from their homes in Africa, Asia and South America and the root causes of their dispossession.

Two weeks ago, the French government shut down a Calais camp that housed thousands of illegal migrants hoping to deter human smuggling. Al Jazeera English’s Hamish MacDonald reports that many of the migrants remain in Calais with their lives in a state of limbo.

International organizations have begun to call attention to the plight of these young workers, many of whom are the children of Afghan refugees who cannot legally work in Pakistan.

In conjunction with Concern Worldwide, Worldfocus’ Yuval Lion produced this signature video.

(View full post to see video)

Karen children in Thailand.

Myanmar has been in the headlines of late, with pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s conviction and sentencing to 18 months of house confinement.

But as a Worldfocus contributing blogger writes, a humanitarian disaster that has been brewing inside Myanmar for years has received relatively scant attention.

In the wake of Myanmar army attacks on ethnic Karen rebels, roughly 100,000 mostly Karen refugees have fled to Thailand and some half a million others are displaced within Myanmar.

Caroline Stauffer is in Bangkok and writes at World Policy about the plight of Karen refugees.

In a field cut off from the rest of Thailand by a muddy mountain pass, 1,000 people have been living under thin tarps for the past six weeks, having fled landmines and shelling in their native Myanmar.  The tarps and wood platforms do not protect them from monsoon rains or the mosquitoes that spread malaria around their makeshift villages.

Factions of the Karen people have fought for greater autonomy from the country formerly known as Burma for 60 years, but the Karen villagers I spoke with just seem to be caught in the crossfire.

In the last few months, the world has turned its focus to the secretive, military-ruled state.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced concern over Myanmar-North Korea military links at the July Asean Regional Forum.  The state show trial of pro-democracy leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi attracted international media coverage, brought UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to Burma and garnered a new release of the U2 song dedicated to the world’s best known prisoner of conscience. In an apparent gesture to this global clamor, the Nobel Prize-winning leader of the Burmese opposition was given what for the junta was a slap on the wrist — another 18 months of detention where she has already spent half of her adult life under house arrest.

Still, though the world has mobilized for the cause of Aung Sun Suu Kyi, the decades old humanitarian disaster occurring in rural Burma remains under the international radar, and the situation is deteriorating.

The Karen villagers I spoke with on the Thai-Burma border said they face forced recruitment by the regime’s army and its ally, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.  Villagers are made to serve as porters or told to walk in front of army patrols, literally serving as human shields. Their stories confirm accounts from exiled media and aid groups that the regime is forcibly recruiting civilians to build up a border guard force.

The Karen are not the only people in multi-ethnic Burma suffering abuse. Ten established camps in Thailand house Karenni, Shan, Mon, Kachin and Rohingya people.

The junta has said all ethnic resistance groups must put down their arms and become political parties before elections can occur. Some groups have tentatively aligned with the regime and are now called cease fire groups. Others fear that without arms they will lose any negotiating power they have left and will not be able to protect their people from the regime’s army.

The regime has been militarizing the Thai-Burma border for years. China and Thailand have signed on to invest in dams in Karen State, and demand that the area be secure before construction can begin. In the unruly, heavily mined jungles of Myanmar, enhanced militarization inevitably means more violence.

[...] One 50-year-old Karen woman I spoke with knew nothing about refugee camps or elections. She did say she was tired.  After traveling across the Thai-Myanmar border three times in her life, she just wanted somewhere to stay put.

More abuses will occur in the coming months as the rains stop, elections approach and the critical gaze of the international community focuses on the aftermath of the trial in Yangon — or yet again abandons the country entirely.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Yan Pritzker Photo | SF under a Creative Commons license.

“Jack.” Photo: Karen Zusman

Last week, authorities in Malaysia announced that they arrested five immigration officers for rounding up illegal immigrants from Myanmar and selling them to human traffickers.

Karen Zusman, an independent journalist, recently returned from Malaysia, where she reported on the plight of Burmese refugees.

In Malaysia refuses to recognize Burmese as refugees, she recounted the story of “Jack” — a Burmese refugee in Malaysia whose girlfriend, brother and friend had been rounded up by immigration officials and put in detention camps.

In this audio interview, she catches up with Jack about recent developments in Malaysia. His girlfriend has been deported to Myanmar to marry a soldier, his brother remains in a detention camp and his friend “John” has been released, but faces an uncertain future.

Jack yearns for a brighter future, but has himself lost his job. Though he has a UNHCR refugee card, he still fears the police and has nowhere to turn. Above, listen to Karen Zusman’s interview, edited by Katie Combs.

For more:
- Watch Burmese refugees rounded up and sold in Malaysia
- Listen to Malaysia refuses to recognize Burmese as refugees
- Read Karen Zusman’s blog post, A Burmese family’s story of multiple arrests, weekly bribes
- Find more information on the Please Don’t Say My Name website

In June, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report blacklisted Malaysia for trafficking refugees into Thailand.

Karen Zusman, an independent journalist, was one of few Westerners inside Myanmar in the immediate aftermath of the monk-led protests in 2007. She interviewed Burmese refugees and produced the audio documentary Please Don’t Say My Name: Burmese refugees at risk in Malaysia over the course of five months in Kuala Lumpur.

I met Jack in Kuala Lumpur after the protests in 2007. Jack was imprisoned and tortured for teaching human rights in his country. When he was released from jail, he fled to Malaysia.

I learned that he and nearly 100,000 Burmese who had fled persecution were now held hostage in a country  that offered no protection from vigilante groups, police and immigration officials. It was routine to hear refugee stories of mistreatment and physical and sexual abuse.

In January of this year, I returned to Kuala Lumpur, but things did not go as planned. I intended to document Jack’s story — his English was good, he was articulate, passionate and street smart. He was working in a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur with several other Burmese refugees.

Shortly after beginning to record, Jack’s Burmese girlfriend was arrested at the Thai-Malaysian border. She had fled Myanmar to be with Jack in Malaysia because her parents had engaged her to a Burmese soldier knowing the family would benefit greatly from the marriage. The girl was caught at the Thai-Malaysian border and imprisoned in Malaysia. Jack arranged for a friend, John, another Burmese refugee, to meet with the immigration officials at the border who were known to accept payment in exchange for releasing refugees. Malaysian officials took the money. And then arrested John.

Jack lost his girlfriend and his best friend in the same night.

Back in Myanmar, a Burmese soldier arrested Jack’s father, an elderly man with a heart condition, who now faced charges for “trafficking” the girl. Jack’s brother was arrested trying to leave Malaysia (also a refugee, he had a work permit but no travel documents).

I tried to console Jack the best I could. I tried — in vain — to get John released from prison by repeatedly reporting his arrest to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). John had been registered with the U.N. and so it was part of their task to release him from prison. But after he completed his sentence, he was subsequently transferred to detention camp.

While all this was happening, there were rumors that a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report would soon be published bringing the Malaysian “deportation” (a.k.a. trafficking practices) under extreme scrutiny.

Jack and his friends were afraid that this would mean the trafficking would stop, and they would no longer have the option to purchase back their “freedom” should they be arrested. This was particularly distressing for Jack, who felt purchasing his girlfriend from traffickers once she was sold to them by Malaysian immigration was his only hope of saving her from a life as a Burmese junta-wife.

The report, which confirmed the allegations that the Malaysian government had been complicit in the sale of refugees to human traffickers at the Thai-Malaysian border, was made public in early April. Since then, as the refugees predicted, the incidents of trafficking have significantly decreased.

But because the raids by Rela (Malaysia’s citizen volunteer corps) and arrests have not decreased, the detention camps are severely over-crowded. Two Burmese refugees have died as a result of water contaminated with rat urine in a camp in Penang. John called while I was still in Malaysia and told me there were 47 people in one tiny cell with no water supply.

Jack’s brother called from a camp in another part of the country and told us that though the monsoon rains had begun, they were kept outside with no shelter and were given food to eat off of the mud floor.

Every week for five months, Jack wired money to each camp to pay for provisions such as toothpaste. Jack said the money was also for them to give money to their jailors so they would not be beaten. When Jack took time off from the restaurant to try and visit them, he was fired.

Now it’s July and Jack’s girlfriend has been deported to Myanmar. His friend was released last week and his brother is being hospitalized for a heart condition exacerbated by his time in the camp — he is still in the custody of his Malaysian jailors.

- Karen Zusman

The attorney general’s office in Malaysia says 10 immigration officers are being investigated after the U.S. State Department placed Malaysia on its list of the world’s worst human trafficking offenders last month.

Karen Zusman, an independent journalist, recently returned from Malaysia, where she reported on the plight of Burmese refugees: Burmese refugees rounded up and sold in Malaysia

Listen to the full documentary Please Don’t Say My Name: Burmese refugees at risk in Malaysia.

Find more information and how to help on the Please Don’t Say My Name website.

View photography by Greg Constantine, Karen Zusman and an anonymous photographer in Malaysia:

The attorney general’s office in Malaysia says 10 immigration officers are being investigated after the U.S. State Department placed Malaysia on its list of the world’s worst human trafficking offenders last month.

Karen Zusman, an independent journalist, recently returned from Malaysia, where she reported on the plight of Burmese refugees.

For more, listen to an audio documentary and view images from Malaysia: Malaysia refuses to recognize Burmese as refugees

The attorney general’s office in Malaysia says 10 immigration officers are being investigated after the U.S. State Department placed Malaysia on its list of the world’s worst human trafficking offenders last month.

Elaine Pearson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the status of the Myanmar refugees in Malaysia and the problem of human trafficking in Asia.

For more: Burmese refugees rounded up and sold in Malaysia

Statelessness could mean you are trapped in the country you were born — with no birth certificate, no passport and no right to vote. You many not be able to own land ownership, access to health care and legal employment. Twelve to 15 million people live in limbo without the benefits of nationality.

Below is an audio slideshow with excerpts from our online radio show on statelessness with Dawn Calabia of Refugees International and journalist Bill Berkeley.

The feature explains statelessness with photos of the following stateless groups: Palestinians at the Iraq-Syria border, the Bidoon in Kuwait, the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, the Haitians in the Dominican Republic and the Eritreans in Ethiopia.

(View full post to see video)

Martin Savidge with the CNN Kosovo team, along with their translator, Gulka. Photo: Martin Savidge

About 10,000 people died in the 1998-99 Kosovo war between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in pursuit of national self-determination. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and this month marks the 10th anniversary of the end of the war.

Following our online radio show on statelessness, Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge describes his experience reporting on the struggle of Kosovars forced to flee in the war.

You can go from something to nothing in just 139 steps. I know, because I counted the footfalls.

It was the spring of 1999 along the border between Albania and Kosovo. The war was raging, and people were trying to get out of its reach. Many fled south, heading to where I was — on the Albanian side of the Morini border crossing. I watched the metamorphosis from a gully, marginally sheltered from occasional gunfire and mortar rounds.

On the Kosovo side of the bridge, the frightened people still had a history, somewhere — a home and a life. One hundred and thirty-nine steps later, they emerged into Albania with none of that, only the clothes they wore. Some even came without families, having been separated in the chaos.

Like most wars, this one was triggering a humanitarian crisis and Albania was in no position to handle it. That day, the traffic was heavier than usual, most of it tractors pulling wagons filled with a bumper crop of women and children.

We began asking questions. Our interpreter was from Kosovo — a teenager who in the early, frantic days of the conflict had become separated from her family after the Serbs forced them from their home, and NATO bombs sent everyone on the run. She had crossed into Albania at this very same checkpoint. A CNN crew found her while doing interviews in a refugee camp. She stood out because she spoke English.

The producer quickly realized that despite the best intentions of the relief agency, a refugee camp is still a very dangerous place for a young girl. The camps were rife with reports of women and children vanishing, kidnapped for the sex trades. After all, who would miss them? They were nobodies, lost in the confusion of war.

Gulka was brought to the safety of the CNN house and hired as a translator. Eventually, we took in a number of similarly-rescued young people, temporarily orphaned by the upheaval of the war.

The group of women before us said they had no idea where their husbands were. The men of their town had been taken away by Serb soldiers and police when the fighting began. The women said they had fled into the mountains, fearing the soldiers would come back for them. They also told us that while it might have looked deserted across the border, just beyond our view was a heavy presence of Serb troops, tanks and artillery.

As if on cue, our conversation was interrupted by a blast. The first mortar round struck on the Serb side of the border…but the successive explosions walked their way over the line.

I was impressed that instead of running when the first round struck, most of the refugees dropped flat. This clearly wasn’t their first time under fire. Even the kids knew to get down. It was only after the sixth explosion that the crowd finally broke and the air was suddenly filled with screams and wails, the sound of revving engines and drifting smoke.

A week later, as we neared the border, we were suddenly forced to stop by the sight walking toward us…bedraggled columns of men. They staggered, stumbled and shuffled. Some men supported others; many were bloodied and beaten, showing scars. All of them looked emaciated and filthy. We pulled over and started filming, gathering a story and documenting what would later be judged as war crimes.

The men described being released from detention centers and camps days earlier. They told of torture and starvation, of unspeakable horrors inflicted on humans by humans. Some cried as they spoke, and one collapsed. Another died at the side of the road — and the men just kept coming.

Eventually, we moved our coverage to the refugee camps. The scenes and sounds of pain and anguish were overwhelming. Tony, another one of our young adopted interpreters, went with us. He had escaped to Albania early in the crisis. As he listened to the men’s stories he often had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

When the interview was finished, as was their habit, the teen translators would often ask personal questions, like where the men were from or if they knew anything of friends and family. After one such conversation, Tony suddenly jumped up. Something the man said had set him off. He raced through the crowd shouting. We ran after him, afraid we’d lose him in the crush of people…maybe for good. Eventually we caught up and found him deep in the embrace of an older man. The two were so overpowered with emotion they couldn’t get out a word, only tears and shuddering gasps. But you didn’t need words to understand. It was obvious…in the middle of a war, in the middle of the chaos on the edge of Albania, Tony had found his father.

- Martin Savidge

But the attacks in Pakistan didn’t stop there. At a funeral for some of those killed, officials said four more missiles struck the procession, killing as many as 40 people and wounding 60 others.

The attacks took place in South Waziristan, an area where Pakistani government forces have stepped up their attacks on Taliban strongholds.

Ahmad Kamal, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United Nations, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the offensive in Waziristan and the refugee situation.

The number of displaced people in Pakistan has swelled and stretched the country’s resources.

Pakistan’s military offensive against Taliban militants in the Swat Valley is nearly over, according to the country’s defense minister.

However, the offensive has had enormous humanitarian costs, with more than 2 million people displaced as a result of conflict this year. The defense minister claims they will be able to start returning home on Saturday.

As people around the globe prepare for World Refugee Day on Saturday, a Worldfocus contributing blogger writes about Pakistan’s growing refugee crisis.

Nadia Tariq Ali works with The Asia Foundation in Pakistan and says that a failure to address Pakistan’s refugee situation could undermine any gains made in security.

United Nations officials have described the recent displacement of Pakistanis as the biggest humanitarian crisis since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It is also the largest dislocation of people in the region since the partition of the South Asian subcontinent in 1947 and, arguably, the worst crisis facing Pakistan since Bangladesh separated from Pakistan in 1971.

The IDP problem in Pakistan is [...]growing. The military offensive uprooted millions of people from three northwestern districts. As the offensive gained strength and people fled their homes for safety, the Pakistani government seemed unprepared for the crisis. Initially, no refugee camps existed, so many people went to the homes of their relatives and friends in other cities. However, in subsequent days, tens of thousands of people have gone to the special sites established for the IDPs in Mardan, Swabi, and Peshawar. Unfortunately, these facilities lacked even the most basic amenities of life: food, proper sanitation, and health facilities. The disruption of normal life has affected displaced persons psychologically, economically, socially, and emotionally. Women and girls face an extra risk of sexual and gender-based violence like rape, forced impregnation, forced abortion, trafficking, and sexual slavery in most internal displacement situations.

The international response to the situation leaves much to be desired. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, the United Nations and humanitarian agencies have issued an appeal for $543 million. As of June 12, only 22 percent of the appeal has been funded. If more money does not come through soon, the dire IDP situation will be compounded.

[...]Focusing on longer-term reconstruction and recovery through economic and social empowerment will help people move forward and rebuild their lives. Pakistan, after all, is not only fighting for its own survival but also for greater regional stability and security, which could face serious setbacks if the displacement issue is not adequately addressed.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Al Jazeera English under a Creative Commons license.

The battle is between government forces and an insurgency that aims to topple the government and impose a stricter form of Islamic law. For more on the conflict, listen to our online radio show on lawlessness in Somalia.

In recent weeks, there has been intense fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, with more than 100 people killed. The United Nations says 34,000 people were forced from their homes by the fighting just last week. More than a million Somalis have been displaced by the war, and fully 40 percent of the population is said to require humanitarian assistance.

Aid groups say that 5,000 Somalis make their way to Kenyan refugee camps each month, where conditions are bad enough that some consider returning to their violent homeland. Three of the camps are in the border town of Dadaab, where there are now more than a quarter million Somali refugees.

Joke van Peteghem, head of Doctors Without Borders in Kenya, describes the deplorable conditions in Kenyan refugee camps. 

Last month, Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting went back to eastern Congo to find out what happened. Together with Lisa Biagiotti and Taylor Krauss, he produced the story of Pascal and Vestine.

Read Michael’s post on what he saw in Congo’s most remote areas: War still rages on in corners of eastern Congo.

A woman displaced by the fighting between Rwanda and FDLR, outside Pinga, North Kivu. Photo: Michael J. Kavanagh

PARECO rebel soldier at an integration ceremony where all rebel groups are joining the Congolese Army. Photo: Michael J. Kavanagh

A boy in Pinga, former FDLR stronghold. Photo: Michael J. Kavanagh

Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting returned to eastern Congo last month to understand the conflicting news coming out of the region. Below he explains what he saw in some of the most remote areas of Congo. Along the way, he reconnects with Pascal and Vestine Bumbari. He reported on the signature story: Pascal and Vestine are alive in Congo, but still not home.

“Michel, we are suffering so much.” Those were the first words Pascal said to me over the phone in February, when he called out of the blue.

Pascal and his wife Vestine live on non-arable lava rocks in their new camp; his clothes are all torn; they don’t have enough food; the rain seeps through the tarp that covers their hut. Until the day we arrived, Pascal had done nothing - nothing - with his days for four months. Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps are not really the place you’d go to look for work.

There is a misconception right now that peace is spreading throughout eastern Congo. Tutsi rebel-leader Laurent Nkunda is under house arrest in Rwanda. There’s a new peace agreement between his rebel group (the CNDP) and the government. Joint-military operations between erstwhile enemies Congo and Rwanda continue against the Rwandan Hutu rebel group hiding in eastern Congo (the FDLR). It all seems like hopeful stuff.

But this new development, this surprising volte-face, is only a beginning. The main issues that caused the war in the first place - land, resources, tribalism, refugees and the continued presence of the FDLR in Congo - have not gone away.

To use the example of our own story: Pascal is Hutu, and he still doesn’t feel safe enough to return to his home, which is still - for the most part - under control of soldiers once loyal to Nkunda. And while 350,000 Congolese in North Kivu have returned home in the last few months (mainly to land formerly occupied by Nkunda’s troops), another 160,000 have been displaced since January as the FDLR takes its revenge on the villages where (they allege) people collaborated with the Rwando-Congolese joint operation.   It makes your head spin.

This new fighting is taking place in very remote regions - I spent days on the back of a motorbike to get there - and what I found was just as devastating as anything I’ve seen in my previous five years of reporting in Congo: Massacres, executions by gun and machete, kidnappings, sex slaves, torture victims.

So while the conflict in some parts of eastern Congo is settling down, there are other corners where the war rages on. This seemingly-endless string of local battles is often what makes people give up on the region - new place names to learn, new rebel groups to figure out.

But don’t give up just yet.

The new collaboration between Rwanda and Congo is the most important development in the conflict in years, and one of the main reasons the countries are now working together is because of pressure from the international community that intensified after last fall’s humanitarian disaster.  Sustaining that pressure is the only way to make sure this conflict truly turns a corner towards peace, so that good, hardworking people like Pascal and Vestine can finally return home.

- Michael J. Kavanagh

Bhutanese refugees at the Beldangi 2 camp in Nepal.

Though they fled or were forced out of Bhutan more than 18 years ago, Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalis have yet to return.

Altogether, more than 103,000 people of ethnic Nepali origin in Bhutan left that country in the 1990s after new citizenship laws were implemented. Many ended up in sparse refugee camps in Nepal.

The Bhutanese government says the majority of the refugees were illegal immigrants.

In the past few years, several thousands of refugees have resettled in the West — but thousands more still remain in the Nepalese camps. 

Don Duncan is a freelance print and radio reporter and videographer who has reported from Afghanistan, France, Bhutan, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Nepal, Spain and the United States.  He writes at World Politics Review about the situation of Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalese minority.

Bhutan’s Radicalized Refugees

When Matimya Moktan, 41, saw her husband Manbahadur standing unannounced in their doorway after a nine-year absence in prison, her heart sank.

“I was sad to see him back here again,” said Matimya, one of more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees living in United Nations-administered camps in eastern Nepal. “I had hoped I would see him again in Bhutan, but his standing back in our doorway meant we may never get back there,” she adds, seated in the corner of the family’s dark wattle-and-daub hut in the Beldangi I refugee camp, five kilometers outside the Nepalese town of Damak.

Manbahadur returned following nine years spent in a Bhutanese prison for having illegally re-entered the country and staging a protest demanding the return to Bhutan of his people, Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalese minority that was expelled in 1991.

Sandwiched between Communist China and largely Hindu India, tiny Buddhist Bhutan, with its population of a mere 600,000, has been given to fits of ethnic and cultural protectionism throughout its history. An impressive necklace of cliff-perched fortresses — or Dzongs — that dot the country’s mountainous perimeter testify to past efforts.

By the 1980s, when the ethnic Nepalese bloc mushroomed to represent one third of the kingdom’s population, Bhutan responded with a “one nation, one people” policy that at once bolstered the majority Drukpa culture by mandating its traditional dress and language for all, and restricted the rights of the ethnic Nepalese population. After a series of civil rights protests by the ethnic Nepalese, many of whom were Bhutanese citizens, the state clamped down — hard.

“We left because we were scared that they would imprison us, that they would beat us, that I would be raped,” Matimya told World Politics Review. In the weeks leading up to her family’s departure from Bhutan in 1991, she says, the army had begun to take women away from their houses.

This was just one tactic in what human rights groups say was a widespread campaign of ethnic cleansing of a minority population that claims to have arrived in Bhutan as early as the mid-1800s. Other tactics, say the refugees, included torture, beatings and the destruction of property.

But in today’s Bhutan, which in March made the transition from a century of absolute monarchy to become the world’s newest democracy, another narrative prevails.

“Deep inside, they know they never belonged to this country,” says Bhutanese Prime Minister Dorjee Y Thinley in his office in Bhutan’s capital Thimphu. What is labeled elsewhere as an ethnic cleansing of Bhutanese citizens is seen in Bhutan as the “regularization” of an illegal immigration problem that had been left unbridled for decades. “They are refugees not of Bhutan, but of the ecological degradation, political upheavals, economic deprivation and insecurity in Nepal,” Thinley says, referring to Nepal’s 10-year civil war that ended in 2006.

For almost two decades, the fate of these refugees has been suspended between these two versions of events.

To read more, see the original post. 

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Katrine Syppli under a Creative Commons license.

The United Nations estimates that 200,000 women and girls have been raped in that time, some victims as young as three years old.

Both the Congolese army and rebel groups have used rape as a weapon of war.

Armed groups use rape to tear apart families, spread disease and weaken communities. Women are often victimized doubly — first by their rapists and secondly by spouses or family members who then find it dishonorable or socially unacceptable to associate with them.

Worldfocus special correspondent Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and video journalist Taylor Krauss recently reported from eastern Congo. Together with Lisa Biagiotti and Bijan Rezvani, they produced this signature story.

See their previous signature story: War in DR Congo: The story of Pascal and Vestine.

Watch a companion Web-exclusive video: Rehabilitating rape victims and families in Congo.

Michael Kavanagh and Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge, along with other experts, held an online radio show on roots of the conflict and prospects for peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For more on the conflict, read our Q&A: History, rebels and crisis in eastern Congo or read Human Rights Watch’s background and timeline of the conflict.

In the last year alone, more than a million people have fled the fighting in eastern Congo.

In spite of a peace accord in 2003, fighting continues and many fear that foreign countries are still involved. Recently, there have been more signs of Rwandan involvement and encouragement of rebels.

The 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers in Congo cannot ease the growing number of casualties as a rebel group threatens to overthrow the Congolese government.

Worldfocus correspondent Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and video journalist Taylor Krauss recently visited the refugee camps in eastern Congo. Together with Lisa Biagiotti, they produced this video on one family’s story.

Note: In the weeks since this story was filmed, the camp has been attacked and Pascal was forced to flee a third time. The camp is now deserted except for a small rebel force, and Worldfocus reporters have not been able to locate Pascal and his family.

Read reporter Michael Kavanagh’s blog post about his experience reporting with video journalist Taylor Krauss in Congo here: Giving a human face to Congo’s conflict.

Taylor Krauss recounts their detention by Congo’s secret police here: Detained by Congo’s secret police.