Bangladesh

Protect Human Rights Activist Sultana Kamal

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Sultana Kamal is a brave lawyer and activist standing up for human rights in Bangladesh. She’s not afraid to take the spotlight on national television and debate the need for fair justice and human rights for all of Bangladesh – men, women and children.

But peacefully expressing her opinion has gained her the attention of those who want to stifle such activities. She’s now been threatened with violence from Islamist group, Hefazat-e-Islam.

'We will break every bone': Islamist leaders threaten Bangladeshi lawyer, WLUML Networker

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Human rights groups have warned about the safety of a prominent Bangladeshi lawyer after Islamist leaders threatened to “break every bone” in her body for defending the installation of a Lady Justice statue outside the country’s supreme court.

Climate Change is Forcing Bangladeshi Girls into Child Marriage

JUNE 9, 2015, Dhaka

Sanjita had very little to say on the subject of how she felt about getting married. Maybe that’s because she’s 10 years old. She had married 18 days earlier, to a boy who is 14 or 15 years old—he works in a garment factory in Dhaka and as a rickshaw driver.

Blogger Oyasiqur hacked to death

Mohammad Jamil Khan

Two madrasa students have been detained for their alleged involvement with the killing

Radical Islamists hacked to death secular blogger Md Oyasiqur Rahman Babu Monday morning in Tejgaon, Dhaka allegedly for his atheist views.

Bangladesh: Government plans to relocate camps cause fear and anxiety among Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.

Bangladesh: "We do not want to live here. We will go anywhere. Even if they send us back to the sea, we will go," says a Muslim refugee from Myanmar.

Bangladesh: How Birth Certificates Help Fight Child Marriage

Birth registration can play a crucial role in reducing child marriage, but this depends on enforcing existing laws and having comprehensive systems in place to register major life events, including deaths, marriages, adoptions and births. A ministerial conference of Asia-Pacific countries confronted this issue last November.

Bangladesh: Slum dwellers face higher risk of domestic violence

DHAKA, 5 September 2013 (IRIN) - Women living in the slums in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital of 15 million people, face a higher risk of domestic violence than women in other parts of the country, say researchers.

Nationwide, recordkeeping and data collection on the extent and types of violence against women are still scarce, according to an expert panel in 2011monitoring the country’s progress on eliminating violence against women. But the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Rashida Manjoo, found ample evidence in a recent visit to Bangladesh that “discrimination and violence against women continues in law and practice”.

Bangladesh: Matrilineal Marriage - 'My mother and I are married to the same man':

When her widowed mother remarried, Parvin Rema, then 13, was part of the deal – one of several such arrangements in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Defies Hardliners, Elects First Female Speaker

Bangladesh has followed India and Pakistan as the third South Asian country to elect a woman as parliament speaker, defying a threat by the Hefajat-e-Islam organisation, which warned the government not to promote women.

Bangladesh: Islamists Demand that Bangladesh's Women Stay at Home

Members of Hifazat-e Islam, a radical Islamist party in Bangladesh, attacked female journalists on assignment as the group marched in the country's capital to demand strict Islamic law, including a ban on free mixing of the sexes and punishment of “atheists and blasphemous bloggers”.