Southeast Asia

Nepali psychiatrist guidance for Nepalese in Myanmar

Myanmar is home to one of the largest and oldest Nepali-origin communities anywhere in the world, numbering in the hundreds of thousands and rooted in generations of Gorkha settlement dating back to British colonial rule, concentrated especially in Shan State towns such as Kalaw, Taunggyi and Pyin Oo Lwin, alongside communities in Yangon and Mandalay. Many families have lived in Myanmar for four or five generations, yet a meaningful number still face unresolved citizenship status under Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Law, which recognises only certain 'national races' and has left some Nepali-origin residents functionally stateless despite generations of residence, unable to fully access services, travel freely, or feel secure about their children's future. The ongoing political instability and armed conflict in Myanmar since 2021 adds a further layer of uncertainty and, for some families, direct exposure to danger or displacement, compounding the everyday strain of raising children and running a business or farm in a country where full legal belonging has never been guaranteed. For a long-settled community, the pull toward an ancestral homeland many have never actually visited sits alongside a genuine, complicated love for the only home most have ever known.