78,000 Bhutan refugees move to West: UN

Some 78,000 Bhutanese refugees have moved to the West from camps in Nepal where they have been living for two decades after being forced out of their homeland, the United Nations said Friday. The refugees have been offered new lives in the United States and other countries following the failure of years of negotiations to secure their return to Bhutan, which says they were illegal immigrants.
Another 38,000 refugees remain in the camps. All are ethnic Nepalese who fled across the border in the early 1990s, claiming persecution after Bhutan made national dress compulsory and banned the Nepalese language. The United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, said in a statement on Friday that 100,000 have submitted applications for the resettlement so far. "Making 100,000 submissions and reaching nearly 80,000 departures are incredible achievements in the history of this refugee programme and for UNHCR," said Diane Goodman, acting representative of the UNHCR in Nepal. "We have been able to achieve these major milestones thanks to the generosity of the resettlement countries and our donors, the great support of the government of Nepal, and the resilience of the refugees."