Beldangi refugee camps

The three camps are located near each other, off main highways LD Rd 15 and DL1, which separates Beldangi I from a nearby river.

Bhutanese exiles were given refuge by the government of Nepal on humanitarian grounds and were temporarily settled in Maidhar by the side of the Kankai river, some 600 km east of Kathmandu.

Gradually the population of these refugees swelled and were moved to refugee camps within Jhapa and Morang Districts of Nepal lying under Mechi Zone Far eastern Zones among which Beldangi-2 has been the largest and biggest camp.

Human settlement began from Sector A and the plots to the north filled up gradually as more and more refugees poured in.

Any one who visited this camp in the early and mid 1990s would have seen hundreds of colorful huts with plastic roofs.

Refugees modeled and remodeled their huts and started extending them even without giving notice to the authority concerned.

3,604 huts were officially counted during the same year but due to rapid birth rate, migration of the refugees to foreign lands and many other factors the present figure might be different.

This action has again made the refugee population of Beldangi swell up to cross the previous figure.