In 2001, about 10 per cent of the population of Bhutan's capital city Thimphu were living in squatted

informal settlements Informal housing or informal settlement can include any form of housing, shelter, or settlement (or lack thereof) which is illegal, falls outside of government control or regulation, or is not afforded protection by the state. As such, the inform ...

; by 2019, the figure had dropped to 2 per cent since the squatters had been rehoused. There are also rudimentary settlements on the periphery of other cities such as Phuntsholing and Samdrup Jongkhar. The inhabitants work as manual labourers or in the

informal economy An informal economy (informal sector or grey economy) is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government. Although the informal sector makes up a significant portion of the economies in developing countrie ...

. There are forest squatters in the south of Bhutan on the border with India: in 2016, evictions led to riots in

Chirang district Chirang District is an administrative district in the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam state in the North-East of India. History It is a relatively new district in the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam. Chirang district has been carved ...

, in the

Bodoland Territorial Region The Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR), informally Bodoland, is an autonomous region and a proposed state in Assam, Northeast India. It is made up of five districts on the north bank of the Brahmaputra river below the foothills of Bhutan and Ar ...

; in

Kokrajhar district Kokrajhar district is an administrative district in Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam. It is predominantly inhabited by the Boro tribe. The district has its headquarters located at Kokrajhar Town and occupies an area of . It has two civil ...

, entrepreneurs clear forest land and sell the right the live there to people who become de facto squatters. In the 1990s, a process of

ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...

in the south of Bhutan led to around 100,000 Lhotshampa (Bhutanese people of Nepalese descent) being driven into Nepal, where they either squat or live in refugee camps.

References

{{Squatting Bhutan 21st century in Bhutan 20th century in Bhutan Society of Bhutan