January 17, 2019
Is DMP's action plan enough to fix our roads?
Apparently “inspired” by last year's safe road movement, the DMP has come up with yet another action plan to deal with Dhaka's anarchic—to put it mildly— traffic situation.
December 19, 2018
Punitive drug policies don't work
Naomi Burke-Shyne, Executive Director of Harm Reduction International, and international NGO “dedicated to reducing the negative health, social and legal impacts of drug use and drug policy”, talks to The Daily Star's Moyukh Mahtab (over e-mail) about the global failure of wars on drugs, and how a health-based approach to drug policy could save lives and promote the well-being of citizens.
November 23, 2018
'Drug policies should be first of all concerned with preserving public health'
Bangladesh's recent impetus on cracking down on drug abuse and trade has led to some divisive results—while there is no doubt that this is an issue that needs to be addressed, the approach taken by the authorities has been questioned.
October 31, 2018
Drug abuse must be treated as a public health issue, not a war
In June 1971, in a press conference, US President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse as the “public enemy number one.” This was a day after the publication of a ...
October 22, 2018
A mass murder largely forgotten
Beginning October 1965 to mid-1966, at least half a million (over a million by some accounts) Indonesians were killed by the army and army-backed local civilian militias. Another million were incarcerated without charge.
October 14, 2018
Unless power is checked, you cannot have liberty
PUBLISHED in 1748, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws remains, after over 250 years, one of the seminal works of political theory. Among this Age of Enlightenment philosopher's preoccupations was the relationship between power and freedom, and how the distribution of power in a government can be the crucial factor between a state of liberty and one of despotism.
September 19, 2018
Another refusal to give workers their due
In the past week, a few interesting things happened. For one, a report by a New York-based research firm was published, which found that Bangladesh topped the list of countries with the quickest growth of ultra-wealthy individuals.
September 8, 2018
Education as the freedom to create and to construct
The theme for this year's International Literacy Day, “Literacy and Skills Development”, speaks of a pressing issue of our time, as the rate of job creation in the country struggles to keep pace with the number of people joining the workforce every year.
August 26, 2018
The ethics of documenting sexual violence
"These women are carrying on with their lives. The injury of what happened is coming up in different ways—it need not be something sensational like the understanding we have of the birangona. Otherwise we would never understand what happened to the birangonas in terms of their experiences of the war."
August 13, 2018
Road safety: Are we tackling the broader issues?
The enormous support that school and college students who had taken to the streets received,