The United States Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights Uzra Zeya, who is also the special coordinator for Tibetan issues, is arriving in Kathmandu on Friday on a three-day official visit.

She is flying to Kathmandu a day after meeting with Indian officials in New Delhi as well as the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and Central Tibetan Administration President (Sikyong) Penpa Tserin of the Tibetan government in exile, in Dharamshala. She also held talks with Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra, and Chief Elections Commissioner of India Rajiv Kumar, among others.

While announcing her visit, the State Department said on May 16 that Zeya will travel to India and Nepal from May 17–22 to deepen cooperation on human rights and democratic governance goals, and to advance humanitarian priorities. “She will also discuss partnering with India and Nepal during this Year of Action for the Summit for Democracy. The delegation will include USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia Anjali Kaur,” it added.

It will be the first visit to Nepal by a US under secretary in a decade. In 2012, two US under secretaries, Wendy Sherman and Maria Otero, had visited Nepal.

Zeya is arriving in Kathmandu amid a flurry of visits from Washington after Nepal ratified a Millennium Challenge Corporation grant in February. This year also marks 75 years of the establishment of Nepal-US bilateral relations.

While she is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and ministers and officials, her engagements in India with Tibetan leaders have sparked curiosity over their possible connection to her Nepal visit.

In Kathmandu, the US delegation led by Zeya will meet Prime Minister Deuba, Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka, Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand, and Chief Secretary Shankar Das Bairagi, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Besides official engagements, she will be busy in private meetings with representatives of Tibetan refugees, and members of the minority groups in Nepal, including Dalit parliamentarians, according to sources.

But government officials said that they do not know whether she plans to meet Tibetan refugee leaders in Kathmandu.

“The US side has not officially communicated with us about her plans to meet the Tibetan community,” a Foreign Ministry official said. But when Donald Lu visited Kathmandu in November, he had also met with the Tibetan refugee leaders. Other US delegations who were in Nepal also met with Tibetan refugees but they did so in private capacity.

When asked about the prospect of Zeya meeting with Tibetan refugees in Kathmandu, US Embassy spokesperson Anna Richey-Allen told the Post via email that Zeya will be meeting with several minority groups in Nepal and expressing thanks to the government of Nepal for its leadership in advancing the rights of minority groups. The spokesperson, however, did not elaborate on the planned meetings with refugee leaders.

But a Tibetan refugee leader told the Post, on the condition of anonymity, that they are meeting with Zeya on Saturday afternoon at a Tibetan refugee camp where they plan to request her to create an environment for them to get refugee identification cards.

“We will request her to lobby the government of Nepal to provide identity cards to refugees. Over 7,000 members of our community mostly born after 1990 have been deprived of refugee identity cards. As per our estimates, since the Nepal government stopped issuing refugee identity cards in 1995, over seven thousand newly arrived refugees and thousands of children have been deprived of identification documents and this has been causing hassles in school and college admissions, taking up jobs and doing business,” the refugee leader said.

During her visit, the under secretary will reiterate the United States’ support for Nepal’s commitments to human rights and democracy, said the US Embassy spokesperson.

Zeya will also confer the International Women of Courage Award on activist Bhumika Shrestha for advancing the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex-plus (LGBTQI+) communities in Nepal, according to the spokesperson.

Recently, the Ministry of Home Affairs had submitted a proposal at the Cabinet to provide identification documents to Tibetan and Bhutanese refugees. A small number of Bhutanese refugees are still living in a refugee camp in Jhapa. But the Cabinet has yet to decide on the proposal, according to officials.

Kathmandu has been feeling geopolitical heat over Tibetan refugees for decades and the political leadership in Kathmandu always remained fixated on how to find a delicate balance between Beijing and Washington over this prickly issue.

Ahead of Zeya’s visit, Hou Yanqi, the Chinese ambassador to Nepal, met with Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand on Wednesday and reminded him about Nepal’s long-standing adherence to the one-China policy.

In their earlier visits to Nepal, senior US officials usually requested Nepal to provide a safe passage for Tibetan refugees to Dharamshala, India, said former home secretary Govind Kusum, who has worked with three prime ministers.

“Another matter the US officials were concerned about is Nepal’s repatriation to China of Tibetan refugees crossing the border from Tibet to Nepal. We told them we have opted for the policy of non-refoulement and not a single refugee was repatriated for long,” said Kusum.

The issue of registration and documentation of Tibetan refugees could not happen due to various reasons including political, he said.

Prime Minister Deuba participated in the Summit for Democracy hosted by the US President Biden in December last year where Nepal had made its unflinching commitments to democracy and human rights.

Reacting to the recent high-level visits from the US, particularly after the ratification of the Millennium Challenge Corporation Nepal Compact and the signing of the $659 million US assistance through the USAID, former Nepali envoy to the US Arjun Karki said these exchanges show the US is a reliable development partner of Nepal.

“The visit by the US under secretary of state also underscores that more high-level visits and exchanges are in the pipeline from both sides in the near future,” said Karki.