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Why is it so Difficult for Bangladeshi Women to Get Justice?

16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

In 2015, Salma's husband and his parents held her down and poured nitric acid down her throat because they wanted more than the Tk 100,000 (USD 1,100) that her parents had already paid in dowry. For months since the wedding, her father-in-law had beat…
Bangladeshi women hold placards during a rally to mark the International Women's Day in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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Rights Makeover Overdue in Bangladesh Garment Industry

Time will tell whether Bangladesh’s garment industry has its Wonder Woman. Last month, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) elected its first female president: Rubana Huq, managing director of the Mohammadi Group.…
Bangladeshi garment workers shout slogans during a protest in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019. Thousands
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Women, Not Weapons: India's Survivors All Deserve Justice

28 years after Kunan and Poshpora, abuses still persist

February 23 sticks in my mind the way a birthday does for most people. After my first 10 years of Bharatanatyam training, I performed my arangetram — a classical dancer’s debut full-length solo recital — on that day in 2013. In telling…
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Combating Sexual Harassment in the Garment Industry

  Sexual Harassment in Garment Factories Eleven women garment workers from a factory in southern India sent a hand-written letter to a local union in late 2016.[1] They wrote: “The plight of women workers … we don’t have anyone who would…
Women Garment Industry
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Bangladesh’s garment factories must never become death traps again

“We don’t want another Rana Plaza.” Those were the parting words when I spoke with a Bangladeshi garment worker who miraculously survived the Rana Plaza building collapse in April 2013. The building housed five garment factories employing…
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Looming Accord Closure a Risk to Bangladesh Sourcing

A crash in slow motion—it’s the only way one can describe the looming economic fallout should Bangladesh refuse to extend the Accord on Fire and Building Safety. In just one week’s time the Bangladesh government may force this landmark agreement to stop…
Bangladesh police stand guard in front of garment factories in Ashulia on December 26, 2016, when factories re-opened after a five-day shut down in response to garment workers’ wage strikes.
News

Will Imran Khan Educate Pakistan’s Girls?

The UK Should Urge Him to Keep Promises on Girls’ Education

Pakistan’s new government has promised to fix one of the country’s biggest conundrums—how to get more girls into school. The UK—which gives more aid to Pakistan than any other country, much of it for education—should both push and help Imran Khan’s…
Two students at a free non-government school for poor children in the Lyari neighborhood of Karachi, Pakistan.
News

When Will Britain Step Up on Burma?

Over the last nine months some 700,000 ethnic Rohingya in Burma have been driven from their homes across the border into Bangladesh by the Burmese military. The attacks have been described by the UN as “a textbook case of ethnic…
Rohingya refugees cross the Naf River with an improvised raft to reach to Bangladesh in Teknaf, Bangladesh, November 12, 2017. Picture taken November 12, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain TO FIND ALL PICTURES SEARCH REUTERS PULITZER
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When Clothing Labels Are a Matter of Life or Death

This spring marks a solemn milestone. More than five years have passed since a series of deadly fire and building accidents in Pakistan and Bangladesh together killed more than 1,500 workers and injured thousands more. In the aftermath of these…
Women work in the sewing division of a factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.
News

The April 24 Ritual – Rana Plaza’s Unfinished Legacy

Every year on April 24, I browse through a poignant online memorial for garment workers who died in 2013 in the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh. The website is a collection of national IDs, passport-size and other photos—a man posing…
News

Tackling Sexual Harassment in the Garment Industry

“Whore.... Do you think this is a brothel? You must meet the production demand here. If you want to continue to work here, listen to us.” This nasty threat is a snapshot of the harassment that supervisors and managers heap on many Bangladeshi…
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The Burmese Military is Committing Crimes Against Humanity

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh – In Bangladesh’s overflowing and squalid camps for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing the Burmese army’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, I met three remarkable women who told me their stories of horror and survival in the…
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Bangladesh: Legalizing Child Marriage Threatens Girls’ Safety

Contain Harm with Strict Regulations

(London) – The Bangladesh government should move quickly to adopt regulations to limit the harms of a new law that legalizes child marriage, Human Rights Watch said today. On February 27, 2017, the Bangladesh parliament approved…
Bangladesh: Child Marriage
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Bangladesh: Child Marriage
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EU Should Call out Bangladesh on Workers' Rights

In April 2015, Cecilia Malmstroem, the European Union’s trade commissioner, made a compelling speech calling for respect for garment workers’ rights in Bangladesh in remembrance of the catastrophic collapse of the Rana Plaza factory, in which 1,100…
Fatema holds a picture of her son Nurul Karim, one year after both he and her daughter Arifa died in the April 24, 2013 Rana Plaza collapse.
News

Pakistan’s Transformation into a Police State

Pakistan began 2015 in a state of grief, shock and anger over the horrific Army Public School attack by the Taliban in Peshawar. This came on top of a series of violent attacks that killed hundreds. But the fatal shooting of 138 children placed the…
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There Are More Child Marriages Happening in 2015 Than You Think: A Q&A

Last week, Spain raised its minimum age for marriage from 14 to 16, and also upped the age for consent from 13 to 16. The BBC said last Thursday that, while only 365 marriages involving people under the age of 16 have occurred in Spain since 2000, there…
Belkis, 15 years old, holds her one-year-old son in her mother’s house which she returned to after the husband she was married to at age 13 abandoned her.
News

One Year After the Girl Summit

A year ago today activists attended the Girl Summit, a global meeting hosted by the UK government to agree on action to end female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage within a generation. Sitting in the audience, I listened to the promises about…
Belkis, 15 years old, holds her one-year-old son in her mother’s house which she returned to after the husband she was married to at age 13 abandoned her.

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