6.3 Domestic Legal and Institutional Framework for Refugees in Nepal

1. The legislation: the no-refugee-law reality (the dedicated statute's absence (the bill- drafting's on-off history (the honest note: the legislative proposals' unenacted line))); the Immigration Act 2049 (the applicable frame (the entry-stay-and-departure regime — the refugee's formal absence (the "illegal-immigrant" default (the mandate-refugee's formal unlawfulness (the detention cases' root)))); the subsidiary faces (the Passport-and-the-Police Acts' peripheral application).2. The institutions: the Ministry of Home Affairs (the lead (the refugee-matters' portfolio)); the Department of Immigration (the status-administration (the Act's machinery)); the National Human Rights Commission (the monitoring (the visits-and-recommendations)); the Ministry-of- Foreign-Affairs interface (the bilateral-frames (the Bhutan-talks' history)).3. The practice-and-mechanism: the GoN-UNHCR cooperation (the 1989-type-and-the- standing understanding (the camps'-and-mandate's tolerated operation)); the ad-hoc executive practice (the non-statutory policy's reality (the governance-by-arrangement critique (the certainty's absence (the exam's critical point)))); the local integration's faces (the Tibetans' settlements; the Bhutanese-camps' administration).