Bangladesh: Human Rights

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Uddin]

My Lords, I declare my interest as an honorary president of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Bangladesh, which I chaired for more than six years. I want to concentrate on the briefing provided by the chair of the APPG, who has only recently returned from a visit to Bangladesh. I will restrict my comments to the briefing and particularly raise the matter of the empowerment of women and the UK’s role and support.

Over the past three and a half years, the Bangladeshi Government have taken some positive steps, including enacting the law against domestic violence and introducing a national policy to advance women’s rights. The Government have taken an important step to protect the rights of minorities. They passed the Vested Properties Return Act, and the Cabinet also approved the Hindu Marriage Registration Bill. While I understand and accept that Bangladesh has a strong set of laws to tackle violence against women, implementation remains poor. We would all acknowledge that. That is reflected in an article written yesterday, although I have not seen much of it, on the increasing number of underage marriages that are taking place. That is of deep concern. I know that we are all familiar with the commitment of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to advancing women’s empowerment, and I am sure that the current Government will be concerned by the matters we are raising today.

I know that the chair of the APPG has raised these issues with leading figures in Bangladesh and with organisations in the field, as has Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited Dhaka this year, most notably on human rights. She raised her concerns publicly during her visit. The fact that Bangladesh has increased its visibility and presence in international forums and is seeking to enhance its reputation gives us all an opportunity to progress some of the concerns that have been raised.

During my time as the chair of the APPG, I deepened my knowledge about Bangladesh and have come to know much more about governance in Bangladesh, to which I had not paid much attention in previous years. Of course I should say that it is where I was born and I have family ties. I therefore visit frequently and have some understanding of what is happening on the ground. I listened carefully to what noble Lords said and it pains me to hear about the harrowing incidents and experiences that they referred to. I shall not comment on them because it would surely just be repetition.

I would add my voices to those, including my noble friend Lord Avebury, who are calling for an internationally recognised practice and procedure to be adopted by the International Crimes Tribunal. As someone who lived amidst the tragedy of the 1971 liberation war, I understand the deep-seated grievances of those who experienced and witnessed rape, pillage and death, and the desire and need of the victims of those atrocities in 1971 for justice and closure. So we must welcome some of the recent amendments to improve the procedures of the tribunal to ensure that the law and the trial process meet international fair trial standards. I can only imagine that the Bangladeshi Government would be interested in that.

Despite what has been said by some noble Lords, I should like to observe that there is significant independent coverage in the media of some of these issues, including disappearances and the deaths of journalists, as well as crossfire killings. We are not alone in raising these matters.

Human rights violation is not a phenomenon that is the exclusive prerogative of any one nation. As we all know, we in Britain have been accused of blatantly disregarding or ridiculing human rights both in the recent past and historically. It is therefore imperative that we ensure, whenever questions arise about the violation of citizens’ rights, that natural justice and due process is fundamentally adhered to in all that we do, so that we can ask our friends to do the same.

I have had a brief look at the many briefings about the UN reports that were sent out in the past 12 hours and observed that there is a huge distinction between the language used for the developed world and that used for the developing world. There seems to be a sense of superiority when referring to human rights violations in other countries, which makes it easy for those countries—who are, if you like, on the other side—to accuse us of double standards. We must be cautious when advocating human rights that we are advocating something to be practised everywhere, not just in one particular country. Deep concerns are expressed in the briefing material about the impact of the moratorium on schooling approved by the Government. This is impacting on a massive scale on girls’ education. I believe that DfID programmes support many of these schools, although not directly. I would therefore ask the Minister: should DfID work with some of the existing charities to ensure that schools remain open?

I would also ask the Minister: how does DfID strategy sit vis-à-vis women’s empowerment in Bangladesh? I understand that DfID has increased significantly its budget to enable the development of large-scale projects through, I believe, the NGO, the Manusher Jonno Foundation. It provides training, advocacy and seminars on women’s rights to minority women in Bangladesh. However, from what we are hearing and according to these reports, the impact seems to have been very limited. There are many questions for DfID to answer. Can the Minister tell us how DfID is evaluating this programme vis-à-vis the concerns raised both in this debate and by some human rights organisations? Are there specific criteria for increasing women’s participation and strategies to counter violence against women and ensure the protection of minority rights? If so, how does DfID explain these continuing concerns?