<figure><img width="640" height="425" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108121144/636a41839c7e80680e04a67cjpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Abdi Rashid and Khabor Abdulhi did not want their faces to be seen. Photo: GOPAL GARTAULA</figcaption></figure>After working in a garage for two years in Uganda, Abdi Khabor had saved up only $7,000, it was not enough to take him to Europe. He was looking for a way to earn more money, when a Ugandan man offered to smuggle him to Naples via Kenya and the Mediterranean for $10,000. Khabor did a Google image search of Naples and saw a prosperous city by the sea and was excited. He paid out $7,000, and his kind employer lent him the rest, saying after seeing him off at Kampala airport: “I know how difficult your life is. Pay me if you can. If not, consider it a help.” This was the first time Khabor had been on a plane, and he was excited when he got to Dubai. After a short transit, he boarded the next flight, not bothering to check his boarding pass. Five hours later on 17 April 2014, the plane landed at a small airport surrounded by mountains. There was no sea nearby. He asked the person who came to pick him up where he was. "Kathmandu," came the reply.Read also: <a style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/kathmandus-little-kabul/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kathmandu's little Kabul</a>, Gopal GartaulaFour years later, Khabor is still in Nepal and not Naples. He was taken to a hotel, where he fell asleep. When he woke up the next day at noon, the hotel receptionist told him to pay up or leave. Nowhere to go, he broke down and wept on the sidewalk in Thamel. The human trafficker’s agent who had come to pick him up at the airport had abandoned him, taking his passport and ticket.After spending 24 hours hungry in Thamel, he told an African person he met his story. The man gave him Rs200 and the address of <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">United Nations High Commission for Refugees</a> (UNHCR) in Kathmandu. Two months later, he received a refugee ID. Then began his long struggle working at construction sites or as a dishwasher to pay for food, clothes, and rent.Read also:<a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/living-on-the-margins/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Living on the margins</a>, Lindsey A Hedges<a style="background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/state-of-statelessness-for-refugees-in-nepal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">State of statelessness</a>, Jan Møller Hansen  <img width="469" height="305" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108121144/636a41869c7e80680e04a67djpeg.jpg" alt="">Khabor lived with 12 siblings in Somalia’s Suddur village near the border with Ethiopia, farming potatoes and barley and raising livestock. Since his father was paralysed, his mother Anav Haasan took care of the fieldwork as well as the family. But life was not easy, there was never even food and the land owners treated them badly. One day a gang of men with guns arrived at his home and stole all the grain. His uncle was shot. Khabor’s sister tried to run away, but was raped. Khabor came to Mogadishu with his 17-year-old brother and 15-year-old sister. He started washing dishes at a hotel, leaving early in the morning and coming back late in the night. He found out too late that his sister was pregnant with the child of a high class man who had promised to marry her, but instead threatened to kill him if he spoke about it. Fighting erupted in Mogadishu, and Khabor could not get away from work. When he got to his room, his brother and sister were missing. He left, travelling through Kenya to Uganda. “I don’t think any of my 13 family members are alive now,” said Khabor one recent evening in Kathmandu. “When I see Nepalis happy with their families, I remember my childhood, the barley bread and soup that my mother used to make. I remember the yard where I used to play. I cry a lot.”In Kathmandu, Khabor met a few other Somalis like him. Among them was Marian Abdulhi, who had seen her husband and father murdered in front of her eyes, and also fled to Uganda. She also paid $10,000 to traffickers to get to Naples.Khabor and  Abdulhi are married, and now have a 4-year-old daughter.  “Even mourning and grieving needs time, which we do not have,” says Khabor. “So we cry in the night after the city goes to sleep.”Abdi Rasid, 27, and his two siblings used to live in Mogadishu. When the fighting started, three armed men entered their home, killed their father inside his shop, and then shot his mother, brother and sister in the yard. Abdi, a witness to this terror, managed to hide and was helped by his father’s friend. Abdi met a trafficker who promised to take him to Australia, but landed up in Kathmandu as well."A man who came to get me at the airport said this was Australia,” Abdi recalls. “He told me I would be working in a hotel, and took me into one.” The hotel turned him out the next day, and he spent the night in an alley. He also received an UNHCR ID, and eventually married Sudi Abdi Ameena, a fellow Somali who had entered Nepal a month before he did. The Nepal government has decided to waive the delayed visa fees of Somali refugees, and deport them. They do not want to go back to Somalia where a civil war is still raging. “I saw my parents and siblings murdered before my eyes, how can I take my child there?” asks Abdi, whose one-year-old son needs a kidney transplant. There are 27 Somali refugees in Nepal, and they do not know where to go next. Says Abdi: “The world has abandoned us.”

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Naples-bound Somalis find themselves in Nepal

Who is accountable for teacher-student relationships?

Of the nearly 19 million eligible voters in next week’s election in Nepal, an estimated 5 million are abroad and cannot cast their ballots. Many others within Nepal must travel to their home districts, and might decide not to because of the cost.
Flights into Kathmandu these days are full of global Nepalis returning just to vote, but almost as many are leaving for overseas jobs. Most of those coming or going are in the 20-40 age group, and a majority want Nepal to see a change in leadership.
Bangladesh held an election this month in which citizens overseas could vote by mail.&nbsp;
“Bangladesh made maximum use of technology not just for campaigning but also for polling itself. We could have also managed this, so people within Nepal did not have to travel to their home districts to vote,” says Mohna Ansari, former head of Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission who was an election observer in Bangladesh.
A 3-day holiday has been declared so people can travel to their home constituencies to cast ballots. Even if there was not enough time to manage ballots for overseas Nepalis, it could have been done for Nepalis within Nepal.
Former Chief Election Commissioner Bhojraj Pokharel reckons that physical voting in countries with a large Nepali diaspora would have been a logistical nightmare, but in the PR system, using electronic voting machines or paper ballot could have been piloted in some places. It is not possible to manage the entire voting process until we introduce the internet voting system.
“First of all, there needs to be political will to bring the policy and be ready to undertake that level of investment and it is not a one-time cost,” Pokharel says. “A government formed by the GenZ could have atr least issed an ordinance ensuring this right, piloted out-of-country voting where possible, which could have built pressure for the future Parliament and the government. It would have given people hope. It is a lost opportunity.”
All major political parties called for voting rights for global Nepalis in their manifestos, but these very leaders blocked legislation allowing it despite a 2017 Supreme Court ruling out of fear that it would be anti-incumbent.&nbsp;
<h2>Why so late?</h2>
Bangladesh delivered election results in just one day, but the final results of Nepal's last local polls in 2022 including that of Kathmandu constituencies took nearly a month.
Acting Chief Election Commissioner Ram Prasad Bhandari said this week that the results of the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) ballot counting would “likely” be published within 24 hours of the poll closing at 5PM on 5 March. But many are skeptical.
“I wonder if we lack the capacity or know-how to announce results as quickly as possible,” says Mohna Ansari.
Former Chief Election Commissioner Pokharel says manual ballot paper counting in Nepal is inherently slow because of the large numner of political parties and/or candidates on the ballot, the counting mechanism, the political behaviour of the candidates/parties and some managerial issues during counting.
“Our present policy is to count all the ballot papers at the returning officers' officies, located at the district headquarters. It requires collecting ballot boxes safetly first. This takes time, and there have been cases of ballot boxes being damaged or stolen during transport. In a few highly difficult, geographically remote polling centres, we use a helicopter or transport. But sometimes, accommodating the party and candidates' representatives remains challenging,” explains Pokharel. A solution could be counting ballots at the very booths where they are cast.
Another reason for the delay is simply the number of political parties, and the need for each ballot paper to be examined by booth representatives for consensus. In close races, the smallest difference can lead to tense situations, further delaying results, even though counting centres are protected by metal fencing so there is no disruption.
After this, then it is the turn of Proportional Representation (PR) ballots to be counted. Weeks pass by the time the results of candidates and parties are tallied and verified. But the most common delay is because election officers think ballot counting is a nine-to-five job.&nbsp;
“The efficiency of poll station officers is most important, and they are incentivised for this,” says Ansari, adding that counting can even start within an hour after voting closes.
In remote areas, local resources could be mobilised to make counting quicker, but there is a crisis of trust, adds Ansari.&nbsp;
That could be easily solved with electronic voting which the EC implemented in the 2008 polls but discontinued because political parties felt the machines could be hacked or manipulated.

Nepalis Select Who To Elect

On Saturday, Iran retaliated with missile strikes on Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain and Qatar, a region where there are an estimated 2 million Nepalis working to send money home. In addition, thousands of Nepalis were preparing to board flights to Kathmandu from West Asian cities this weekend to vote in the 5 March election. Many are said to be stranded at various aviation hubs. A Qatar Airways flight from Doha took off just before the air space was closed, while Air Arabia and Kuwait Airways have diverted or cancelled flights. Nepalis in the West Asian region said things were relatively calm where they were, although some heard loud explosions at about noon local time. In Dubai, some thought they were Ramadan fireworks.&nbsp; In Kuwait, nearly 2,000 Nepalis working in the US military base as security guards and cleaners were evacuated before the strikes. In Bahrain where the US Fifth Fleet naval base is located and which was hit by two Iranian missiles, workers contacted by Nepali Times said the situation was under control and the authorities had told everyone to stay indoors and not use highways. The conflict also coincided with the beginning of Nepal’s trekking and mountaineering season, and tourists were either on their way or planning to leave European and North American cities for Himalayan hikes. Most of them transit through Doha, Dubai or Kuwait and all three airports are closed. Turkish Airlines flights via Istanbul are still operating.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260228130212_ab5e132d56da1df6a3fb1b6919648f845a168ad2c51d79f7587fb85a6e913b97.png" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260228130212_ab5e132d56da1df6a3fb1b6919648f845a168ad2c51d79f7587fb85a6e913b97" data-rendition-name="original" width="1864" height="826" loading="lazy" alt="Qatar and UAE airspace closed"> <figcaption>Qatar and UAE airspace closed. Credit: Flightradar24</figcaption> </figure>  However, the main impact for the world could be a spike in the price of petroleum products if the strategic Strait of Hormuz is blocked. China relies on Iranian oil for their refineries, and Nepal could be affected indirectly if the economies of its neighbours are hit. Nepal imports all its diesel, petrol, LPG and aviation fuel from India which sources it mainly from the Gulf, and until recently from Russia. Petroleum makes up 25% of the value of all imports, and that is more than Nepal earns from all its exports. Saudi Arabia this year overtook the UAE as the main destination for Nepali workers, with the number now totalling 400,000. There are said to be as many in the UAE, and another 350,000 in Qatar. There are another 100,000 mostly women in Kuwait, and 50,000 each in Oman and Bahrain.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260228130220_d24ae633ff84f283835434becdb2f1351f84c415ce87ca34378bd4e2669661b3.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260228130220_d24ae633ff84f283835434becdb2f1351f84c415ce87ca34378bd4e2669661b3" data-rendition-name="original" width="1500" height="1000" loading="lazy" alt="West Asia Iran conflict"> <figcaption>Iran retaliated with missile strikes on Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain and Qatar on Saturday.</figcaption> </figure>  Nepal receives nearly $11 billion a year in remittances from overseas Nepalis (not counting India) through official channels, although the total is said to be much more. &nbsp;This makes up more than a quarter of Nepal’s GDP equivalent — one of the highest proportions in the world. More than half of the overseas remittances to Nepal comes from its workers in the Gulf, and it is the mainstay of the country’s economy. Nepalis in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE alone send home more than $3 billion a year, much of that helping support their families back home. An average Nepali worker in the Gulf sends home nearly $2,500 a year, and this is spent mainly for household supplies, children’s education and healthcare. There are also an estimated 7,000 Nepali caregivers and healthcare workers in Israel, and most of them are women. The Nepal Embassy has asked Nepalis in Israel to take caution and move to bomb shelters.

West Asia war and Nepalis

&nbsp;The BBC documentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idv4mMGHPLk&amp;t=173s">Shot Like Enemies: Inside Nepal’s GenZ Uprising</a> set off a frenzied debate in the public sphere, highlighting how sensitive international coverage of the country still is for Nepalis despite the national media doing its job. The investigative report focussed on the massacre outside Parliament on 8 September that led to the collapse of the government and paved the way for the election on Thursday.&nbsp; There was praise from supporters of the film and scathing criticism. Raw clips and leaked conversations showed how deliberately the protesters were shot in cold blood. Others saw a sinister conspiracy behind the release of what they regarded as a one-sided documentary just a week before the election. News in the foreign media of the election from Nepal was eclipsed this week by the war in West Asia. Nepali Times brings this selection of readings from the international press. For the complete articles go online or type in the links.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260303110320_be0e1078a3563f9433e73af614fc24db7fb0d42560c88d9522a8b17e944a3e3f.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260303110320_be0e1078a3563f9433e73af614fc24db7fb0d42560c88d9522a8b17e944a3e3f" data-rendition-name="original" width="759" height="412" loading="lazy" alt="international coverage of Nepal elections"> </figure>  Read the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/3/2/balen-shah-rapper-mayor-nepals-next-prime-minister">full story</a> here.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260303110320_493b9bca6cd984aa0d846ee577a3ef5aadc11086f6387c6b5b3f6d1c21b087a6.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20260303110320_493b9bca6cd984aa0d846ee577a3ef5aadc11086f6387c6b5b3f6d1c21b087a6" data-rendition-name="original" width="636" height="678" loading="lazy" alt="international coverage of Nepal elections"> </figure>  Read the <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/nepali-parties-promise-big-ahead-of-polls-however-concerns-remain/article70688498.ece">full story</a> here.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260303110320_b813313c898a1addf207ee663210ae8ebc0cd2f47ba8fb088530c445a733896b.jpg" data-media-id="editor_5" data-image-id="20260303110320_b813313c898a1addf207ee663210ae8ebc0cd2f47ba8fb088530c445a733896b" data-rendition-name="original" width="625" height="582" loading="lazy" alt="international coverage of Nepal elections"> </figure>  Read the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgqgl3j5nj4o">full story</a> here.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260303110320_b643581c73d3e4babef9e1f89414b33864c2807a5488cd1c0d2de6d34755a42c.jpg" data-media-id="editor_7" data-image-id="20260303110320_b643581c73d3e4babef9e1f89414b33864c2807a5488cd1c0d2de6d34755a42c" data-rendition-name="original" width="701" height="813" loading="lazy" alt="international coverage of Nepal elections"> </figure>  Read the <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/will-nepals-long-standing-nonalignment-survive-the-first-election-after-its-gen-z-uprising/">full story</a> here.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260303110320_934a42f754451d7354407413f3eaa0fd8fff798122f7e419fdaef82dfe1895ab.jpg" data-media-id="editor_9" data-image-id="20260303110320_934a42f754451d7354407413f3eaa0fd8fff798122f7e419fdaef82dfe1895ab" data-rendition-name="original" width="631" height="759" loading="lazy" alt="international coverage of Nepal elections"> </figure>  Read the <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/in-nepal-polls-political-parties-root-for-mega-infrastructure/">full story</a> here.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260303110320_b5152c5addd7c988a4eb2bbd1dfbec78ea0113677792bf986b622dacbd9d2463.jpg" data-media-id="editor_11" data-image-id="20260303110320_b5152c5addd7c988a4eb2bbd1dfbec78ea0113677792bf986b622dacbd9d2463" data-rendition-name="original" width="961" height="803" loading="lazy" alt="international coverage of Nepal elections"> </figure>  Read the <a href="https://scroll.in/article/1090389/nepals-election-is-referendum-on-its-future-and-democracy-in-south-asia">full story</a> here.

somalia

Naples-bound Somalis find themselves in Nepal

Who is accountable for teacher-student relationships?

Nepalis Select Who To Elect

West Asia war and Nepalis

International commentary on Nepal election