Respect refugees' rights: Mahat

Kathmandu, Sept. 20: Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr. Prakash Sharan Mahat Monday urged the international community to respect the right of Bhutanese refugees’ to return to their homeland.

Addressing the High Level Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), he said “While appreciating the host developed countries for resettling many Bhutanese refugees, he stressed that their right to return to Bhutan should be respected, as many who are still in refugee camps in Nepal are eagerly waiting for long to return,” Permanent Mission of Nepal to the United Nations, New York said in a press statement.

He said, “The issues of political refugees couldn’t be resolved with the source countries taking a back bench. Resolving the issues related to the refugees is the responsibility of the country causing it and not the country where they are residing.”

The meeting on ‘Global Compact for safe, regular and orderly migration: towards realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and achieving full respect for the human rights of migrants’ was organized by the President of the General Assembly at the UN Headquarters in New York and organized in two plenaries and six parallel roundtables.

Dr. Mahat is leading Nepali delegation to the 71^st session of the UNGA.

He shed light on Nepal’s domestic policies and priorities on refugees and migrants while stressing on the need of global efforts to address this pressing issue.

Underlining that international migration was a multidimensional reality, the minister called for facing effectively in its entirety.

“Ensuring safe, orderly and regular migration and mobility of people was necessary through well planned migration policies, putting in perspective the various types and causes of migration,” he said.

Referring to the problems and issues of the economic migrants of which Nepal is one of the largest source country, Dr. Mahat stressed that remittances they earn was not without huge and long term social, cultural and environmental costs back home.

Highlighting the need of an effective rescue mechanism for the migrant workers in emergencies, he shared that Nepal promptly responds to such situation through immediate evacuation and other measures.

Speaking in another meeting on Climate Justice Dialogue, Minister Mahat called for international partnership and cooperation for adapting and mitigating the challenges posed by climate change.

“Climate change has further increased the vulnerabilities of the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Least Developed Countries and mountain countries like Nepal, putting them in difficult situations to cope the challenges,” he said.