ANCHORAGE, Alaska
Pictures are all Netra Dhakal has left to remember what he called home for most of his life -- a refugee camp in western Nepal.
"I was only two when we left Bhutan," Dhakal said.
Dhakal's family was part of an ethnic group that faced severe discrimination and persecution from the Bhutanese government because they practiced the Nepali culture and language.
"They give 5-10 days to leave Bhutan, and they started shooting guns and my parents they didn't get any property or any money from Bhutan," Dhakal said. "They just get us child[ren] and we, just six people, came to Nepal."
But once Dhakal's family and other Nepali-speaking Bhutanese reached Nepal, it was an endless cycle of displacement.
"'They come from Bhutan that means you're Bhutanese not Nepalese. You're not allowed to stay here we're not giving them citizen[ship] from Nepal,'" says Dhakal, describing what Nepal told his family.
"So we don't have Bhutanese citizen[ship]. We don't have Nepali citizen[ship]. We don't have any kind of citizen[ship]. We're not from any of the countries."
Dhakal and his family spent nearly two decades living in one of the hundreds of bamboo and thatch homes at what he describes as a confining refugee camp.
"There's police and army, and every morning, every evening they're asking where we're going," Dhakal said.
He and his family are not alone. Around the world, millions are forced to leave their home countries and seek shelter in refugee camps.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, for decades, political and armed conflict engulfed the country of Burma, which is formally known as Myanmar.
An international organization says the national military government has been persecuting an ethnic group, which has displaced more than 3 million Burmese.
That includes Naw Naw Nhkum and Lu San Aung, who are the first Burmese refugees to come to Alaska. They arrived in Anchorage just three months ago.
"They cannot live in Burma and they had to move to Malaysia and go under the UNHCR organization and became refugees," said the translator for the couple.
Violence in South and Central Somalia forced millions to flee their home country to refugee camps.
"Refugee resettlement is a process of bringing people who have fled their country due to war, persecution and have ended up in another country where they basically want to come back home," said Karen Ferguson, Alaska's refugee coordinator.
But, how do these people from countries all around the world come to Anchorage? With the help of the State Refugee Coordinator, it's the federal government that decides what communities have the capacity to take in refugees from various countries.
The idea of sanctuary comes out of World War II. It’s fleeing a situation in need of care and protection.
Once someone is given refugee status, their names go on a long waiting list, and Alaska is a player in a nationwide effort of resettling those refugees each year.
"We're looking at 120 right now. That's what we're working with the government," said Susan Bomalaski from Catholic Social Services. "On some bigger communities like San Diego or Los Angeles, it may take thousands."
For the past eight years, Alaska's Catholic Social Services' Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services, or RAIS, has helped about 1,500 refugees.
The refugee re-settlement program in Alaska started in 2003 with former Soviet Union refugees. Then Alaska took part in a surge of Hmong refugees coming from Thailand.
"Since then we've expanded," Bomalaski said. "We're serving people from 10 countries now."
The program provides refugees with an apartment and basic necessities to help with the initial shock of calling a foreign country home.
"We were also very nervous. My family was very nervous. What can we do here? We can't speak English, we don't know how to talk to people," Dhakal said. "We don't have any work, and how can we adjust in America? It was very difficult in the beginning."
Contact Christine Kim at ckim@ktuu.com
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