Overview of legally registered refugees residing in India
This article is about legal refugees residing in India. For illegal immigrants to India, see Illegal immigration to India.
Tibetan refugee self-help center in Darjeeling, West Bengal
Since its independence in 1947, India has accepted various groups of refugees from neighbouring countries, including partition refugees from former British Indian territories that now constitute Pakistan and Bangladesh, Tibetan refugees that arrived in 1959, Chakma refugees from present day Bangladesh in early 1960s, other Bangladeshi refugees in 1965 and 1971, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees from the 1980s and most recently Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.[1] In 1992, India was seen to be hosting 400,000 refugees from eight countries.[2] According to records with the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, as on January 1,2021, there were 58,843 Sri Lankan refugees staying in 108 refugee camps in Tamil Nadu and 54 in Odisha and 72,312 Tibetan refugees have been living in India.[3][4]
India does not have a national refugee law, but it has always accepted refugees from neighbouring countries using the principles enunciated by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1959: refugees will be accorded a humane welcome, the refugee issue is a bilateral issue and the refugees should return to their homeland when normalcy returns.[5]
Despite the lack of a formal law, the Supreme Court of India has used the Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Article 13 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to uphold the obligation of refugee protection by the government.[6]
India is not a State Party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, nor has it enacted national legislation to deal comprehensively with refugees. Instead it deals with refugees largely at political and administrative levels, and has only ad hoc systems in place to deal with their status and needs. The legal status of refugees is, therefore, no different from those of ordinary aliens whose presence is regulated by the Foreigners Act of 1946.[citation needed]
^Sarker, Refugee Law in India (2017), pp. xi–xii.
^Chimni, Status of Refugees in India (2003), p. 378.
^"Over 58,000 Sri Lankan & 72,000 Tibetan refugees living in India: MHA".
^"'3 meals, 2 cups tea' – Sri Lankan Tamils crossing sea for refuge in Mandapam Camp again".
^
V. Suryanarayan, Geeta Ramaseshan, Citizenship without Bias, The Hindu, 25 August 2016.
Since its independence in 1947, India has accepted various groups of refugees from neighbouring countries, including partition refugees from former British...
Around 40,000 Rohingya refugees live in slums and detention camps across India, including Jammu, Hyderabad, Nuh, and Delhi, the majority of whom are undocumented...
Generation Tibetan RefugeesinIndia". Journal of Refugee Studies. 00 (0). Michael, Franz (1985). "Survival of a Culture: Tibetan RefugeesinIndia". Asian Survey...
million refugees returned to Afghanistan, increasing the country's population by 25%. Afghanistan is one of the largest refugee-producing countries in the...
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Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Apart from citizens and expatriates, there are a number of communities inIndia who trace their ancestry back...
by Afghan refugees since the start of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979; the largest numbers temporarily reside in Iran. As stateless refugees or asylum seekers...
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). But even people with refugee cards are being detained across India due to security concerns. A small...
refugeesinIndia : a journey without end. INDIA: Refugee Studies Centre. 1 January 1996. Srilankan Tamil refugeesinIndia. Vol. 13. INDIA: Refugee Studies...
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largest settlement of Polish refugeesinIndia during the war. Another such campsite for Polish refugee children was located in Balachadi, it was built by...
crowded refugee camps. On 6 December 1947, communal violence broke out in Ajmer inIndia, precipitated by an argument between some Sindhi Hindu refugees and...
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India, officially the Republic of India (ISO: Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous...
granted refugee status by the contracting state or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) if they formally make a claim for asylum. In English...
refugees had come to Tamil Nadu. The flow of refugees had stopped in 2002 because of the cease fire agreement. Sri Lankan Tamils inIndia number in the...
uprising in Burma, and this date does signal a growth in the numbers of refugeesinIndia. However, there is also a sizable community of Chin refugeesin India...
and Punnagai Poo Gheetha. Evoking the plight of Sri Lankan Tamil refugeesinIndia, the film stars Rajkiran, Naveen Chandra and Rupa Manjari, with music...
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and...
refugees since the Second World War, when an estimated 10 million people crossed over from East Pakistan to Indiain 1971. The majority of refugees were...
Limbu, Kirat, Tamang, Gurung, Rai, and others. These refugees registered inrefugee camps in eastern Nepal during the 1990s as Bhutanese citizens who...
to 40,490 refugees officially recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Indian, Tibetan and Bhutanese refugees account for...
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