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.
March 8, 2019
CEDAW at a dead end in Bangladesh?
The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW in short, was adopted in 1979, and came into force in 1981. To date, a total of 189 countries across the world have ratified it in order to work for a world with gender equality.
March 1, 2019
Localising the Rohingya refugee response
For decades now, Rohingya refugees have been crossing the border into Bangladesh as unrest worsened in their native Rakhine, Myanmar.
February 15, 2019
The Layoffs
On January 12, Jubayer walked to his factory with his fellow workers to find his name and face up on the walls of the factory. He has since been unable to enter the factory and terminated from work.
February 1, 2019
Publishers prepare for the Boi Mela
February is synonymous with a string of cultural events, but none perhaps as iconic as the Ekushey Boi Mela, a month-long commemoration of the 1952 Language movement that takes over Suhrawardy Udyan and Bangla Academy.
January 25, 2019
Stuck in limbo
An old Dhaka native, Sheikh Shariful Amin went to the UK as a student in 2008. He had already completed a master's degree but as it didn't count there, Amin then did one at the University of East London.
January 11, 2019
Going up the Americas
That Bangladeshis migrate to far-flung parts of the world is nothing new—undertaking long, dangerous, and expensive journeys to reach countries in Europe, East Asia, Africa, and even the Americas.
December 28, 2018
The Watchers
One of the biggest concerns this election is regarding observers, or more specifically, the number of observers participating. 25, 920 local observers have been cleared to monitor the polls, the lowest number of observers (barring the 2014 elections which saw even fewer numbers and was largely dismissed as a one-sided affair) going back to 1991.
December 21, 2018
The Crisis Inside
Just over a year ago, a large number of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar crossed the border into Bangladesh and crowded into and around existing refugee camps.
December 14, 2018
No Woman's Land
Hamida Begum's* husband had beat her yet again. But this time was different. He had also uttered talaq three times, essentially divorcing her according to the Islamic customs of the Rohingya community.
November 30, 2018
Witness to Horror: In conversation with advocate Razia Sultana
Razia Sultana is a Rohingya lawyer and educator in Bangladesh. She is currently one of 16 women activists featured by the Nobel Women's Initiative for their work as change makers in their societies.
X