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Parosi pehele, lekin Bangladesh sabse pehele: Sushma

Human Rights Report
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi have already laid a strong foundation of cooperation between the two countries. To review the growing relations, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj paid an official visit to Bangladesh on October 22-23 that could afford an opportunity for review of the excellent bilateral relations between Bangladesh and India.
This was the second visit of Sushma to Bangladesh and comes soon after the State visit of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh to India in April 2017. During the visit, she and her Bangladesh counterpart AH Mahmood Ali co-chaired the 4th meeting of the India-Bangladesh Joint Consultative Commission.
The External Affairs Minister said Bangladesh gets priority among all India's neighbours as per its neighbourhood policy.
"Our foreign policy follows neighbourhood first approach. Parosi pehele, lekin Bangladesh sabse pehele (Among all neighbours [of India] Bangladesh comes first)," she said reflecting India's growing importance to Bangladesh.
Calling her Bangladesh counterpart AH Mahmood Ali as his 'brother and Dada', Sushma assured Bangladesh of resolving all the issues transparently and sincerely.
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Total 154 persons killed in Ocotber, 2017

Human Rights Report:

The documentation section of Bangladesh Human Rights Commission (BHRC) furnished this human rights survey report on the basis of daily newspapers and information received from its district, sub-district and municipal branches. As per survey it appears that 154 peoples were killed in October, 2017 in all over the country. It proves that the law and order situation is not satisfactory. Bangladesh Human Rights Commissions extremely anxious about this situation. In the month of October, 2017 average 5 people were killed in each day.
The Law enforcing agencies and related Govt. departments should be more responsible so that percentage of killing October be brought down to zero level. To institutionalize the democracy and to build human rights based society the rule of law and order must be established everywhere. Through enforcing rule of law only such violation against human rights can be minimized.
It appears from documentation division of BHRC:
Total 154 person killed October, 2017
Killing for dowry 3, Killing by family violence 25, Killed due to social discrepancy 45, Political killing 3
Killed by Law enforcing authority 2, Killed by BSF 2, Killed due to doctor negligence 4, Kill due to abduction 7, Assassination 5, Mysterious death 56, Women & Chilled killed due to rape 1, Killed by acid throwing 1.
Killed by several accidents:
Killed by road accident 222, Suicide 21
Besides victims of torture:
Rape 41, Sexual Harassment 11, Torture for Dowry 5, Acid throwing 4, Journalist torture 3.
 

Bangabandhu, Tajuddin … and our sad history
Syed Badrul Ahsan

 

Human Rights Report:

There is a whole raft of reasons why Tajuddin Ahmad will not be forgotten by this nation. And it is particularly in October when memories of the man who led the battlefield struggle for national liberation are reignited, enough to make us ponder whether the chaos we wallowed through between August 1975 and June 1996 would have come to pass had Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Tajuddin Ahmad not fallen out with each other.
And yet there is a need to rephrase that statement. Did they really fall out? Or was their parting of ways more a result of the machinations against the alliance of two of Bangladesh's historic figures by self-seekers than a conscious divergence of opinion between the Father of the Nation and the wartime prime minister? One needs to look back at history, to understand the nature of the winning combination that was the Mujib-Tajuddin team as the Awami League hit the highway seeking broad political change for Bengalis even as the state of Pakistan militated against such change.
In Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Bengali nation for the first time perceived dedicated and principled leadership. Not in him was there anything of the pointless pragmatism of his mentor Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawady. Neither was there any of the flip-flops that Sher-e-Bangla A.K. Fazlul Huq demonstrated, particularly in the post-Jugto Front period in Pakistan. Mujib was never willing to compromise. And he did not compromise. His soulmate in that gigantic task of reinventing Bengali politics and turning the nation away from Pakistan towards a new, liberal secular goal was Tajuddin Ahmad. More than anyone else in the Awami League, it was the Mujib-Tajuddin team which powered the drive for political change.
 

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Challenges and Opportunities for Women at Work
S. M. Rayhanul Islam

Human Rights Report:
We are living in the world which is undergoing deep changes and global challenges affecting both women and men. Throughout their working lives, women have to continue to face significant obstacles in gaining access to decent work. Only marginal improvements have been achieved since the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, leaving large gaps to be covered in the implementation of the '2030 - Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)', adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Inequality between women and men persists in global labour markets, in respect of opportunities, treatment and outcomes. Over the last two decades, women's significant progress in educational achievements has not transformed into a comparable improvement in their position at work. In many regions in the world, in comparison to their male counterparts, females are more likely to become and remain unemployed, have fewer chances to participate in the labour force and - when they do - often have to accept lower quality jobs. Progress in surmounting these obstacles has been slow and is limited to a few regions across the world. Even in many of those countries where gaps in labour force participation and employment have narrowed and where women are shifting away from contributing family work and moving to the services sector, the quality of women's jobs remains a matter of concern. The unequal distribution of unpaid care and household work between women and men and between families and the society is an important determinant of gender inequalities at work.
To mark the commitment of International Labour Organi-zation (ILO)'s constituents to gender equality and as the Organization approaches its centenary in 2019, ILO has launched the 'Women at Work Centenary Initiative' with the objective of taking stock of the status and conditions of women in the world of work, and identifying innovative action that could give new impetus to the ILO's work on gender equality and non-discrimination.

 

Global politics at a crossroads

David Held

Many states today claim they are democratic, yet the history of their political institutions and processes reveals the fragility and vulnerability of many democratic arrangements. The history of twentieth century Europe alone makes clear that democracy is a remarkably difficult form of government to create and sustain. And, today, we are witnessing the resurgence of authoritarianism and new threats to democracy. Why?
Democracy is built on the values of citizenship, and the equal political freedom of all citizens. The equal standing of every member of the political community is the heartbeat of the democratic process. Recognition of the other is, in principle, built into the fabric of democratic societies even though clashes of interests, intense political debate and the daily conflict of judgement and opinion are routine. The ideal, the hope and the aspiration of democracy is to include all citizens, to ensure self-determination, to find ways of accommodation, even in the face of disagreement and political conflict.
Even in our fraught and imperfect world, the idea of the politics of compromise and accommodation - the bedrock of democratic politics - can just about survive. Political compromises are made, negotiations continue, rhetoric rises and falls with the ebb and flow of democratic politics. Barring some extreme examples, legislators from different sides of the aisle can still talk and have tea across most, if not all, democratic countries. While all ideologies regard their views as right, in the politics of accommodation, opposing views are at least considered valid.
Accommodation fractured
This is no longer is the case in several countries, with opponents and opposing views increasingly delegitimised and discarded, and their advocates mocked, dehumanised and even threatened. Recent examples range from Trump's America  to Brexit Britain, from Orbán's Hungary to Modi's India, and from Erdo?an's Turkey to Duterte's Philippines. When political systems become tolerant of falsehood and deceit on seismic levels, and when they even offer promotion to those who champion lies, democracy becomes vulnerable and highly fragile. And when those who oppose this are ridiculed and cast aside, the politics of accommodation begins to fracture.
The retreat to nationalism and militant identity politics is counter to the process of accommodation that has underpinned European and world peace since the end of the Second World War. It is as if all that was learnt in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust and the Gulag risks being undone.
And yet, it would be false to assign all responsibility for the erosion of accommodation to right wing populist politics alone. Exclusionary politics can, and does, come from all sides of the political spectrum. The difference between the far-left and far/alt-right is that the former remains at the margins at the time of writing, while the latter has been galvanized and empowered in critical respects.

The right man for the job
AKM Moinuddin

The importance of Chartered Accountants has been increasing enormously amid growing importance of trade and industry along with gradual expansion of capital and money markets in a country like Bangladesh. Today, Chartered Accountancy (CA) has emerged as a unique profession. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB), the national professional accounting body, established under the Bangladesh Chartered Accountants Order 1973 (President's Order No. 2 of 1973), is playing an important role in the country. Dhaka Courier exclusively talked to its President Adeeb Hossain Khan in his office on its various objectives and activities.
Business activities in the country are rapidly expanding with its fast growing economy creating a huge demand for quality Chartered Accountants (CAs) that needs to be addressed, says the chief of the national professional accounting body.
"The economy is doing very well. It's a tremendous performance. When economy grows, businesses also get expanded. But in line with the demand, the number of CAs didn't increase," said ICAB President Adeeb Hossain. He said the overall demand has increased and the economy expanded over the past couple of years, and that is the one big reason why the country needs more quality CAs.
"To be honest, we need a lot more Chartered Accountants to play the important role they play. We aren't getting high quality graduates what we need for this profession," Adeeb Khan said lack of knowledge about the profession might be another reason.
About private sector investment, he said this has not grown that much as land availability still remains a problem.
"The land you're providing might not be convenient for the business I want. I don't get land where I want. When I get one its ownership is often disputed," he said laying emphasis on serious structural reforms on land issue.

 

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