Bhutan became a party to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on 31 August 1981. But the situation of Bhutanese refugee women is appalling. Among the 100,000 Bhutanese refugees, around 50 per cent of the population in the refugee camps are women, most of these women are illiterate and they participate less in social activities. In the cultural sphere, the southern Bhutanese women had to bear the brunt of the government's cultural policy. The Bhutanese government forgetting its responsibility towards improving the status of women has deliberately attacked them in this campaign of ethnic cleansing. […] Southern Bhutanese women were deprived of their right to wear their dress; their ceremonial marriage necklaces were stripped off; they were made to cut their hair short. Instead, they were forced to adopt the dress and culture of the northern Bhutanese.

The women have always been the worst hit by government repression. In most cases, their husbands were imprisoned or had to flee the country for fear of persecution. The security forces plundered their homes, tortured, intimidated and raped these helpless women. There are 156 rape victims in Bhutanese refugee camps as per the records of CVICT Nepal. According to Shangri-La Without Human Rights eight women were raped to death. The following testimonies exemplify the extent to which women's rights have been violated by the Bhutanese government.