Seventh Annual IBRU Milefsky Award Honours Buddhi Narayan Shrestha

Mr Shrestha has used his background in surveying to build a career devoted to interpreting and communicating borders in South Asia’s mountainous, contested, terrain.

In 1992, following five years as Director General of Nepal’s Survey Department, Mr Shrestha began a second career as the self-styled ‘Border Man of Nepal’. After educating himself on legal issues in border management and boundary recovery, Shrestha set out to apply his surveying background to broader issues in border studies, becoming an expert in boundary delimitation, advising governments on the intricacies of historic treaty maps and their implication for contemporary dispute resolution, and publishing 14 books on the topic.

Reflecting on his career, he writes in the prologue to his most recent book, “The Border Man performs as a boundary keeper of the nation. He keeps his eyes on the boundary line, border pillars and markers….[I have] been performing various activities and duties as a border guard, border keeper, border indicator, border protector, territory visualizer for more than three decades for the protection of [the] national territorial boundary of my country. That’s why I chose here to call myself ‘The Border Man of Nepal’.”

In granting the award, IBRU Director Philip Steinberg noted, “Buddhi Narayan Shrestha has chosen to devote himself to borders out of a desire to support his country but also to bring about the peace and stability that requires an environment of agreed boundaries. He has made an important contribution to boundary-making, in Nepal and beyond, and we are proud to recognise this with the Milefsky Award.”

The Milefsky Award is made possible by a bequest from the estate of Raymond Milefsky, a long-time borders expert with the US Department of State who was a frequent tutor at IBRU training workshops. The award includes a cash prize of £745.

The Milefsky Award is made annually to an individual or organisation that has advanced boundary-making or cross-border cooperation. Nominations for the 2025 award will open in January 2025.