Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether the Government has plans to provide election observers to monitor the conduct of the forthcoming general election in Bangladesh; and what recent discussions he has had with his counterparts in other EU members states on the potential deployment of an EU Election Monitoring Mission to Bangladesh in advance of those elections.

​The UK supports election monitoring in Bangladesh through a Department for International Development project that funds domestic observers to monitor the political environment around elections, including observation of sub-national elections. This project will also provide local observers to monitor conduct on the day of the general election. The UK has consistently advocated for an EU election observation mission to Bangladesh.

I want to see a general election in Bangladesh that is free, fair and inclusive and I encourage the Government of Bangladesh and the main opposition parties to engage in an effective dialogue to lay the groundwork for this. The Foreign Secretary made these points to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina when they met on 24 September at UNGA. I made these points to the senior Bangladeshi interlocutors, including the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Shahriar Alam, and senior members of the opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, during my visit to Bangladesh from 29 June to 1 July.