Rethinking international aid practices in Bangladesh
While the pandemic was a first in recent times, there has been an international aid system in place for decades now to deal with the fallout of war, hunger, poverty, refugees, and forced displacement.
LAILA NUR: A force of resilience
Laila Nur first stood up against the Pakistan government as a schoolgirl of only 15, just about to sit for her SSC exams in 1948.
Lost decades in Rohingya camps
Long before August 2017, there were Rohingya refugees who lived in camps in Cox’s Bazar, who had left Myanmar decades ago.
A city free of fear: what women voters want
A 21-year-old DU student was raped and tortured in a notoriously dark stretch of the Airport Road in Kurmitola on the evening of January 5. The lone suspect, who was arrested a few days later, had allegedly raped and mugged other women near the spot in the past.
The misleading claims
Suu Kyi: Please allow me to clarify the term clearance operation. Its meaning has been distorted. As early as the 1950s has been used against communists. It simply means to clear an area of insurgents or terrorists.
THE LAST HUSTLE
The soft light of the setting sun illuminates the entire section every time I walk in, mostly because I AM ALWAYS LATE. On one side white balloons hang, on another side a dart board.
“I never start writing until I can hear the voices of the main characters in my head”
I always had a desire to write fiction from school days onwards, but ‘to be a writer’ seemed like an unattainable goal.
Lost in documentation
A long-awaited and yet-to-be released ‘Ethno-Linguistic Survey of Bangladesh’ identifies 14 indigenous languages on the verge of extinction. Completed in 2015, this is the first large-scale linguistic survey undertaken in the country since the colonial-era ‘Linguistic Survey of India’ by George Abraham Grierson in 1928.
July 5, 2019
Speaking for our times
When I started reading Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, it was not for the fact that it was the new work of a much-admired writer of the
June 28, 2019
Is the UN redundant?
An internal report, now released to the public, on the UN’s conduct in Myanmar between 2010 and 2017 says there was ‘systematic failure’ of the organisation in the Rohingya crisis
June 21, 2019
Quantifying gender in the national budget
By now it has been established that women have less access to opportunities for social, economic and political advancement. National
June 14, 2019
The high price for a foreign degree
Samia* returned to Bangladesh two years ago, after a harrowing experience in the UK where she went for higher education.
May 17, 2019
Slow poison
While Dhaka residents continue their ongoing protest against the poor-quality water that is piped into our homes by WASA, at least it
April 26, 2019
The uphill task to receive an education in the camps
On a recent visit to the camps, a young Rohingya boy, who proudly wore a bright blue UNICEF backpack, took us to his school.
April 19, 2019
Beyond the pitch
16-year-old centre back Akhi Khatun's talent caught the attention of scouts when she played in the 2014 edition of the Bangamata Primary School Gold Cup. She was soon enrolled in the Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protishtan, or BKSP, and called up for the U-14 team playing at the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) women's regional championship in Tajikistan in 2015. The girls won.
April 5, 2019
The dust-laden air of Dhaka
We all know Dhaka's air is bad. Yet it is never more visible than now, in the drier months of the year. This is only compounded by the constant construction that unfolds across the city, not least the metro that is being developed to ease congestion and pollution on the roads.
March 22, 2019
The life and work of Simeen Mahmud
The life of a researcher often goes unnoticed. But for Simeen Mahmud, who passed away a year ago this month, her contemporaries and colleagues in the world of development academia in Bangladesh and worldwide, speak volumes of her work and about her as a person.
March 8, 2019
Imagining a women-friendly city
While science fiction novels have moved on to imagining lunar cities where people travel on hoverboards, Bangladeshi women can still barely imagine a place where half of its population isn't constantly discriminated against. No one here dreams of hoverboards—they just want good buses they can get on without being groped or having their wallets stolen.
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