WGAD Opinion No. 60/2024 (Bhutan)

Opinion No. 60/2024 is a finding of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) concerning three long-term prisoners held in Bhutan: Birkha Bahadur Chhetri, Kumar Gautam and Sunman Gurung. The Working Group adopted the opinion at its 101st session, held in Geneva from 11 to 15 November 2024, and the text was made public in March 2025. It concluded that the deprivation of liberty of the three men was arbitrary on four separate grounds under the Working Group's categories, that two of the cases also amounted to enforced disappearance, and that the appropriate remedy was their immediate release together with reparations and an independent investigation. The Royal Government of Bhutan has not, on the public record, complied with the opinion or issued a substantive response to it.^[1]

The opinion is the most detailed UN human rights finding against Bhutan since WGAD Opinion No. 48/1994 and Revised Decision 3/1996 concerning Tek Nath Rizal. It is also the first WGAD opinion to apply the categories framework to the cohort of prisoners arrested in the wake of the 2008 re-entry attempts and the crackdown on the Bhutan Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist–Maoist), and the first to characterise their detention as discriminatory on grounds of political opinion and linguistic-minority status.^[2]

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is a special procedure of the UN Human Rights Council, established in 1991 by the former Commission on Human Rights through resolution 1991/42 and renewed at three-year intervals since. It is composed of five independent experts serving in their personal capacity, drawn from each of the UN regional groups. Its mandate is to investigate cases of deprivation of liberty imposed arbitrarily, taking into account the relevant international standards in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and to seek information from governments and individuals.

The Working Group acts on individual communications submitted by detainees, their families or third parties. After receiving a submission, the Secretariat transmits the allegations to the state concerned, which has sixty days to respond. The Working Group then deliberates and adopts an opinion, which is sent to the source and to the government before being included in the Working Group's report to the Human Rights Council and uploaded to the OHCHR database. The Working Group classifies arbitrary detention into five categories:

• Category I — when it is impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty.
• Category II — when the deprivation results from the exercise of rights or freedoms guaranteed by the Universal Declaration and, where applicable, the ICCPR (notably freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association, and political participation).
• Category III — when grave violations of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial render the deprivation of liberty arbitrary.
• Category IV — when asylum seekers, immigrants or refugees are subjected to prolonged administrative detention without judicial review.
• Category V — when the deprivation of liberty constitutes discrimination on grounds including political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, language, or other status, and aims at or can result in ignoring the equality of human rights.

The Working Group's opinions are not binding in the sense of an enforceable judgment, but states are expected to cooperate in good faith with UN special procedures, and a finding of arbitrariness creates a documented obligation to release, remedy, and prevent recurrence. Bhutan has not ratified the ICCPR; the Working Group nonetheless retains jurisdiction because its mandate also runs to obligations under the Universal Declaration and customary international law.

The three cases

The opinion concerns three men, all from the Nepali-speaking Lhotshampa community of southern Bhutan, who returned to the country in 2008 after long periods in the refugee camps in eastern Nepal and were arrested. According to the reconstruction in Human Rights Watch's reporting on the opinion, all three were charged with treason under the National Security Act of 1992 in connection with the alleged distribution of political pamphlets. All three were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. They are held at Chemgang Central Jail outside Thimphu, in the section reserved for prisoners the authorities classify as "anti-national".

Findings

The Working Group found the detention of all three men arbitrary on four independent grounds.

First, it found that the men had been arrested and held incommunicado in conditions that placed them "outside the protection of the law", a hallmark of Category I arbitrariness in the Working Group's jurisprudence. In the cases of two of the three prisoners, the Working Group went further and characterised the detention as amounting to enforced disappearance within the meaning of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, to which Bhutan is not a party.

Second, the Working Group found that the conduct for which the men were detained — peaceful political expression and the alleged distribution of pamphlets — fell within the exercise of rights protected by Articles 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration (freedom of opinion, expression, peaceful assembly and association). Detention on that basis constitutes Category II arbitrariness.

Third, the Working Group found that the proceedings against the men breached the right to a fair trial, including the right to legal counsel, to be tried without undue delay, and to have any conviction reviewed by a higher tribunal. These breaches were of sufficient gravity to render the detention arbitrary under Category III.

Fourth, the Working Group found that the detention was imposed "on discriminatory grounds, because of their political opinion and status as members of a linguistic minority", bringing it within Category V. This is the first time the Working Group has applied the Category V framework to a Bhutanese case in a manner that explicitly names the Nepali-speaking minority status of the detainees as a basis for the discrimination finding.^[3]

Articulated violations

As reconstructed from Human Rights Watch and OHCHR summaries of the opinion, the Working Group cited violations of the following standards:

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights — Article 9 (freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention), Article 10 (right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal), Article 11 (presumption of innocence and procedural guarantees), Article 19 (freedom of opinion and expression), Article 20 (freedom of peaceful assembly and association), and Article 7 (equality before the law and protection against discrimination).
• ICCPR — Articles 9, 14, 19, 21, 22 and 26, applied as customary or interpretive standards notwithstanding Bhutan's non-ratification.
• UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, particularly the principles on access to counsel, communication with the outside world, and judicial control of detention.

The full text of Opinion No. 60/2024 is filed under the Working Group's 101st session record in the OHCHR database and the UN Digital Library (record 4079667). Direct quotation in this article is avoided pending retrieval of the original PDF; figures and findings are reported as paraphrased in Human Rights Watch's 18 March 2025 summary and the OHCHR press release of April 2025.

Recommendations

The Working Group recommended that the Royal Government of Bhutan take the following steps:

• Release Chhetri, Gautam and Gurung immediately and unconditionally.
• Accord them an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law.
• Conduct a full and independent investigation into the circumstances of their arrest, detention and trial, and take appropriate measures against those responsible for the violation of their rights.
• Bring Bhutan's law and practice on national security offences and detention into conformity with international human rights standards, including by reviewing the National Security Act of 1992 and the terrorism provisions of the Penal Code of Bhutan (2004).
• Ratify the ICCPR and its Optional Protocols, the Convention against Torture, and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

The Working Group also requested that the Government report back, within six months, on the steps taken to implement the opinion. No such report has been made public on the OHCHR record at the time of writing.

Response of the Royal Government of Bhutan

According to Human Rights Watch, the Royal Government of Bhutan was given the standard sixty-day period to respond to the source's submissions before the Working Group adopted the opinion. The Working Group's text records that the Government did not engage substantively with the allegations on the merits during that window. Following publication, the Government has not issued a press release, statement or note verbale acknowledging the opinion. Kuensel and the Bhutan Broadcasting Service, the two principal domestic outlets, have not, on the publicly searchable record, reported on Opinion No. 60/2024 or on the joint statement issued by six UN Special Rapporteurs in April 2025 that referenced it. The silence is consistent with the long-running domestic pattern of non-coverage of the political-prisoner caseload, and should be read against the backdrop of Bhutan's collapse in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking from 33rd in 2022 to 152nd in 2025.

In Bhutan's submissions to the Universal Periodic Review — including the fourth-cycle review held in November 2024, the same month the WGAD opinion was adopted — the Government has consistently maintained that those held in connection with the events of the 1990s and 2008 were tried in the ordinary courts for criminal offences against national security and that none should be regarded as a political prisoner. It has noted but not accepted recommendations to ratify the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture across all four UPR cycles (2009, 2014, 2019, 2024).

Context and significance

Opinion No. 60/2024 sits within a broader sequence of UN human rights findings on Bhutan that have accelerated since 2023. In April 2025, six UN Special Rapporteurs and working groups issued a joint communication addressing the cases of nineteen named long-term prisoners and calling for their release; the OHCHR press release of the same month publicly summarised both the joint communication and Opinion No. 60/2024. Together, these documents form the most substantial body of UN human rights findings on Bhutan since the early 1990s, when the displacement of the Lhotshampa community first drew sustained international attention.

For the Royal Government, the opinion is uncomfortable on three counts. It applies the Category V discrimination framework in a manner that names the linguistic-minority status of the detainees as a basis for the finding, which directly contradicts the official position that the detentions were ordinary criminal matters. It characterises two of the cases as enforced disappearance, an offence Bhutan does not recognise in domestic law. And it recommends ICCPR ratification, which Bhutan has resisted across four UPR cycles. For the diaspora-led Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan, the opinion represents the first time UN special-procedure machinery has formally validated central elements of its long-running advocacy.

The opinion's practical effect remains contingent. Bhutan retains the royal prerogative of mercy under Article 2 of the 2008 Constitution, and only the Druk Gyalpo can commute a life sentence; Human Rights Watch reported in January 2026 that the King's office has informed political prisoners' families "not to bother applying for clemency". Whether the diplomatic pressure created by the opinion alters that calculus is the central open question.

Coverage

International coverage of Opinion No. 60/2024 has been concentrated in human rights and diaspora outlets rather than mainstream international press. Human Rights Watch issued the principal English-language summary on 18 March 2025; the OHCHR followed with a press release in April 2025; Bhutan News Network, The Bhutan Watch, pardafas.com, the Nepali Times and the Kathmandu Post carried reports drawing on those summaries. The Working Group's text itself is filed under its 101st session record in the OHCHR database and indexed in the UN Digital Library. There is, on the available record, no domestic Bhutanese reporting of the opinion, and no academic commentary in the peer-reviewed literature at the time of writing.

See also

• List of Bhutanese Political Prisoners
• Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan
• National Security Act of 1992
• Chemgang Central Jail
• Tek Nath Rizal
• Sha Bahadur Gurung
• Universal Periodic Review of Bhutan

References

1. Bhutan: UN Finds Detention of Political Prisoners Arbitrary — Human Rights Watch, 18 March 2025
2. Bhutan: UN experts call for release of long-term political prisoners — OHCHR press release, April 2025
3. UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — OHCHR mandate page
4. UN Digital Library record 4079667 — WGAD 101st session opinions
5. Bhutan's Political Prisoners Suffer Illness and Death in Dire Conditions — Human Rights Watch, 18 January 2026
6. EU Should Press Bhutan to Free Political Prisoners — Human Rights Watch / Amnesty International joint statement, 15 April 2025
7. Bhutan News Network — coverage of UN expert statements on Bhutanese political prisoners, March–April 2025
8. Universal Periodic Review — Bhutan, OHCHR (cycles 2009, 2014, 2019, 2024)