Four international human rights organisations working with the Nepal-Bhutan joint verification team at the Bhutanese refugee camps in eastern Nepal have demanded the involvement of a third party, particularly the UN High Commission for Refugees. The four rights INGOs?Human Rights Watch, Lutheran World Federation, Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and Refugees International?are consultants to the UN. Together with the Centre for Protection of Minorities and Against Racism and Discrimination in Bhutan (CEMRAD-Bhutan) they have forwarded their recommendations to the Nepali and Bhutanese foreign ministers. They said that the initiation of the joint verification process has brought a sense of ?hope and optimism? to refugees awaiting repatriation. But they expressed concern that various Bhutanese rights groups working in the camp areas are being pressurised to refrain from activism. The groups suggested that the presence of international monitoring bodies like the UNHCR was important to carry out verification in accordance with international standards and to uphold the rights of approximately 100,000 Bhutanese in the camps.