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Hasina describes Bangladesh's journey towards 'self-reliance' to London audience

Human Rights Report
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has described Bangladesh's journey towards self-reliance after achieving independence at a programme in London.
She presented the keynote speech - 'Bangladesh's Development Story: Policies, Progresses and Prospects' - at the programme organised by the UK's Overseas Development Institute or ODI at Queen Elizabeth Centre on Tuesday.
She said her Awami League party charted a roadmap for future Bangladesh - 'Vision 2021' in its 2008 election manifesto.
"It foresees, among other things, that by 2021, the Golden Jubilee year of our independence, Bangladesh will become a middle-income country," she said.
ODI is one of the UK's leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues.
Hasina said the government gave 'special' attention to the agricultural sector to make the country self-reliant in food production.
Her government also focused on mobilisation of domestic resources, Hasina said.
The prime minister said private sector had been opened up to boost investments and thereby create job opportunities. Bangladesh undertook several fast-track projects with foreign investments, she said and added 100 Special Economic Zones were being set up across the country to attract FDI.




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Total 163 persons killed in April 2018

Human Rights Report:

The documentation section of Bangladesh Human Rights Commission (BHRC) and International Human Rights CommissionIHRC jointly furnished this human rights survey report on the basis of daily newspapers and information received from its district, subdistrict and municipal branches. As per survey it appears that 163 peoples were killed in April, 2018 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 April, 2018 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 April 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 163 person killed April, 2018
Killing for dowry 3, killing by family violence 30, Killed due to social discrepancy 57, Political killing 5, Killed by Law enforcing authority 22, Killed due to BSF 2, Killed due to doctor negligence 2 ,Kill due to abduction 4, Assassination 5, Mysterious death 31, Women & Chilled killed due to rape 2.
Killed by several accidents:
Killed by road accident 223, uicide 7
Besides victims of torture:
Rape 19, Sexual Harassment 11, Torture for Dowry 5, Journalist torture 1, Acid throwing 2.

 

 Crossing the Rubicon
Enayetullah Khan

On 7 March 1971, we turned our backs on a disturbing, debilitating past. On that afternoon, we followed the lead of our Great Man, the Druid in our lives, and crossed the Rubicon. It was our moment of self-assertion. It was his finest hour. We simply turned the page, found a new leaf on which to write new history, our history.
When Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman rose to speak before that huge crowd of a million people gathered at the Race Course in Dhaka, indeed stood before the seventy five million people of Bangladesh, in formidable political presence, something of the electric coursed through the air. Over the preceding few days, reports and rumours had been making the rounds about an impending declaration of independence by the man whose party, the Awami League, had secured a clear majority of seats (167 out of a total of 313) in Pakistan's national assembly at the general elections of December 1970. What should have been a journey to power as Pakistan's prime minister on Mujib's part had by early March 1971 been transformed into a movement for Pakistan's eastern province to walk out of the state created through the division of India in 1947 and of which it had been a part for twenty four years. The reasons were all out there. They had to do with the intrigues which had already been set in motion to thwart the assumption of power at the centre by the Awami League.
History was made on the day. The speech Bangabandhu delivered at the Race Course served the very crucial purpose of bringing home the truth that Bangladesh was on its way to political freedom. At an intellectual level, the speech was a masterpiece. Within its parameters, Mujib deftly negotiated his way out of a bind, one in which he had found himself since President Yahya Khan had unwisely and indefinitely deferred the scheduled 3 March meeting of the new national assembly in a broadcast on the first day of the month. Almost immediately, the fiery student leaders allied to the Awami League cause moved miles ahead to demand that Mujib declare Bangladesh free of Pakistan. Over the next few days, such demands began to be echoed in other areas, eventually persuading everyone that the Bengali leader was actually about to give in to the pressure for an independence declaration. His rejection of an invitation to a round table conference called by General Yahya Khan for 10 March was seen as evidence of his intended action. Besides, there had been no perceptible move by him to restrain the students of Dhaka University when they decided to hoist the flag of what they believed would be an independent Bangladesh.
And yet those who stayed in touch with Bangabandhu, or watched the way he handled the situation in those tumultuous times, knew of the complexities he had been pushed into. Caught between a rock and a hard place, he needed to find an acceptable, dignified way out of the crisis. On the one hand, a unilateral declaration of independence would leave him confronting the charge of secessionism not only from the Pakistan authorities but also from nations around the world.

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Rohingya lawyer urges UN to refer Myanmar to ICC for crimes
 

Human Rights Report:
A lawyer from Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority who focuses on the trauma, mass rape and trafficking of its girls and women urged the UN Security Council on Monday to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court for "horrific crimes" against the Rohingya and other ethnic groups.
Razia Sultana, who has been working with Rohingya girls and women in refugee camps since 2014, told the council: "Where I come from, women and girls have been gang raped, tortured and killed by the Myanmar army for no other reason than for being Rohingya."
Sultana was the first Rohingya woman to address the U.N.'s most powerful body on the plight of her people, who aren't recognized as an ethnic group in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Its government insists the Rohingya are Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living illegally in the country and has denied them citizenship, leaving them stateless without basic rights including freedom of movement.
Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled from Myanmar's northern Rakhine state to Bangladesh since Rohingya insurgents attacked about 30 security outposts and other targets last Aug.
25. Myanmar security forces then began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages that the U.N. and human rights groups have called a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Sultana told a Security Council meeting on sexual violence in conflict that her own research and interviews provide evidence that Myanmar government troops "raped well over 300 women and girls in 17 villages in Rakhine state." She added that with over 350 villages attacked and burned since August, "this number is likely only a fraction of the actual total number of women raped."
"Girls as young as six were gang raped," she said. "Women and girls were caught and gang raped in their homes, as they were running away or trying to cross the Bangladesh border. Some were horribly mutilated and burned alive."
Sultana said the sexual violence involved "hundreds of soldiers and occurred across a vast part of Rakhine state." She called that "strong evidence that rape was systematically planned and used as a weapon against my people."
The pattern of mutilation after rapes not only terrorized the Rohingya people, she said, but indicated "a specific directive ... to destroy their very means of reproduction."
The Security Council is scheduled to visit Myanmar and Bangladesh later this month and Sultana told members they must meet with women and girls in refugee camps in Cox's Bazar and work with Bangladesh authorities to stop the increased incidents of Rohingya girls as young as 12 being trafficked.
 

 

 A woman to lead the UN: imminent or illusory?
Thalif Deen

 

Human Rights Report:
The 193-member General Assembly - one of the highest policy-making bodies at the United Nations - will get a much-needed break, come September, when a woman will preside over its 73rd session, only the fourth in the history of the world body.
The two who are in the running are: Mary Elizabeth Flores Flake, Permanent Representative of Honduras, and María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility of Ecuador-both from the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) group.
On the basis of geographical rotation, the LAC Group claims the upcoming presidency-an elected high ranking UN position which has been overwhelmingly dominated by men.
The break comes even as the United Nations has continued to vociferously preach gender empowerment to the outside world but failing to practice it in its own political backyard-despite scores of resolutions adopted by member states.
Since 1945, the Assembly has elected only three women as presidents: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India (1953), Angie Brooks of Liberia (1969) and Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa of Bahrain (2006). And that's three out of 72 Presidents, 69 of whom were men.
The track record of the 15-member Security Council is infinitely worse because it has continued to elect men as UN Secretaries-General, rubber-stamped by the General Assembly, and most recently in October 2016 - despite several outstanding women candidates.
And that's zero out of nine male UN chiefs: Trygve Lie of Norway, Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden, U. Thant of Burma (now Myanmar), Kurt Waldheim of Austria, Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, Kofi Annan of Ghana, Ban Ki-moon of South Korea and, currently, Antonio Guterres of Portugal.
The two highest ranking political positions at the UN have long been identified as the intellectual birthright of men. And in terms of diplomatic protocol, the President of the General Assembly (PGA) has the status of a head of state in international fora.
Will the election of a fourth woman as the 73rd PGA later this year augur a new era? Or is it just a flash in the pan?
Barbara Crossette, a former UN Bureau Chief for The New York Times (1994-2010), and who has written extensively on gender empowerment, told IPS both candidates seem to bring some interesting resumes and welcome commitments to the work of the General Assembly-"and Latin American women can be quite fearless, as you know".
"But I can't really judge how real all this is. In both cases, however, the presidency would be a prestigious prize for either nation. But that's not of international importance.".
 

The quest for a child-friendly digital world
 

S. M. Rayhanul Islam

Human Rights Report:
Like globalization, 'digitalization' has already changed the world. The rapid proliferation of information and communications technology (ICT) is an unstoppable force, touching virtually every sphere of modern life, from economies to societies to cultures, and shaping our everyday life. Childhood is no exception. The amount of technology available to children today is greater than in any previous generation, and it is more specifically designed to capture their imaginations. However, there is a heated debate as to how the digital influx is shaping children's development and experience. Are social media changing the way that children form relationships? How is technology changing the way that children think, and how will it shape the classroom of the future? The UNICEF publication "The State of the World's Children 2017" examines the ways in which digital technology has already changed children's lives and life chances - and explores what the future may hold. It also argues for faster action, focused investment and greater cooperation to protect children from the harms of a more connected world - while harnessing the opportunities of the digital age to benefit every child.
The report contains five chapters. The first chapter 'Digital Opportunity: The promise of connectivity' looks at the opportunities digitalization offers to children everywhere, but especially children disadvantaged by poverty, exclusion, conflicts and other crises. For example, ICTs are bringing education to children in remote parts of Brazil and Cameroon and to girls in Afghanistan who cannot leave their homes. ICTs are also enabling child bloggers and reporters in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to advocate for their rights. They're increasingly supporting children and their families in emergencies. And they're literally giving a voice to children with disabilities: "The day I received an electronic notepad connected to the internet, my life literally changed," Ivan Bakaidov, an 18-year-old with cerebral palsy, writes in this report.
Chapter Two titled 'Digital Divides: Missed opportunities' examines the data on who is being left behind and what it means to be unconnected in a digital world. The top-line numbers are striking: Nearly one third of all children and youth worldwide - around 346 million 15-24 year olds - are not online. In Africa, 3 out of 5 youth (aged 15 to 24) are offline; in Europe, the proportion is just 1 in 25. But digital divides go deeper than just connectivity. In a world where 56 per cent of websites are in English, many children cannot find content they understand or that's relevant to their lives. Many also lack the skills, as well as the access to devices like laptops, that would allow them to make the most of online opportunities.
The next chapter 'Digital Dangers: The harms of life online' delves into the digital dark side and the risks and harms of life online, including the internet's impact on children's right to privacy and expression.


 

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