Bhutan is a tiny landlocked, mountainous kingdom perched on the eastern Himalayas surrounded by India in the south, east and west and by the Autonomous Region of Tibet in the north. The country has three main ethnic groups - Ngalongs of Tibet Stock in the west, Sharhops of Tibeto-Burman origin in the east and Lhotshampas of Nepalese ethnicity in the south. The country has an estimated population of around 6,00,000. In Bhutan there is no written constitution nor an independent judiciary to impart justice, the judiciary works like simply another government department with no qualified legal practitioners. Under such circumstances each and every right of the individual as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are under the mercy of the rulers.

Under the situation the Student Union of Bhutan (SUB) was formed on 23 March, 1988 inside the country by the college students and people in different government services and institutions. After one and half years of clandestine low profile activities (for it was unlawful to form any kind of association or union) it was forced to operate from outside following governments crackdown and arrest of some of its activists in late 1989.

SUB is a platform shared mostly by Bhutanese Students and Youths in various fields regardless of their religious faith, races, caste, creed, sex etc. maintaining its own identity and rising above partisan politics, this oldest body has always been in the forefront of the Bhutanese movement.