Download 2003 Human Rights Watch report in .pdf format (500 kb)
Trapped by Inequality:
Bhutanese Refugee Women in Nepal

Sometimes I was beaten so badly I bled. My husband took a second wife. I didn’t agree—. He said, “if you don’t allow me to take a second wife, then the ration card is in my name, and I’ll take everything.” I have asked my husband for the health card and ration card and they don’t give it to me—. I have not gotten approval to get a separate ration card.

—Interview with Geeta M. (not her real name), Bhutanese refugee camps, Nepal, March 26, 2003

Bhutanese women who are living as refugees in Nepal, many for more than a decade, confront not only the hardship of life in refugee camps, but also the injustice of gender-based violence and discrimination. Refugee women and girls have reported rape, sexual assault, polygamy, trafficking, domestic violence, and child marriage in the camps. Women suffering domestic violence are unable to obtain safety or their full share of humanitarian aid because of discriminatory refugee registration procedures and inadequate protection measures. The registration system also prevents married refugee women from applying for repatriation or rations independently and prohibits them from registering children not fathered by a refugee.

More than one hundred thousand Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees live in seven refugee camps jointly administered by Nepal and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in southeastern Nepal. The refugees fled or were forcibly evicted from their homes in Bhutan in the early 1990s, when the Bhutanese government introduced highly discriminatory citizenship policies targeting the ethnic Nepalese population. For twelve years, the government of Bhutan has asserted that the refugees are not Bhutanese nationals or are voluntary migrants who relinquished their citizenship when they left Bhutan. The governments of Bhutan and Nepal finally initiated a process for verifying and categorizing refugees in 2001. This process has drawn international criticism for lacking transparency, excluding UNHCR, and failing to assess refugees’ claims to Bhutanese citizenship fairly.