When seemingly unending political street-battles gripped Bangladesh in late 2006, the United Nations pushed the country’s military in a circuitous way to take over the administration, brazenly violating its own charter that bars the world institution from interfering in any member state’s internal affairs.
The UN coerced the reluctant Bangalee generals by threatening them with the loss of their participation in international peacekeeping jobs, which are highly prized by Bangladesh’s armed forces. On 11 January 2007, the military grudgingly agreed to rule the country from behind the scenes and created a facade of a civilian administration with an ailing president and a rubber-stamp council of advisers, who acted as cabinet ministers. This unprecedented political posture was dubbed as ...
Gardening on the roofs of residential buildings has emerged as a poplar way of passing time and satisfying the mind in many of Bangladesh’s towns and cities, including its capital Dhaka, which environmental experts say will have a moderate yet positive effect on the environment.
These gardens, at the same time, to some extent, benefit the families running them, economically.
Many owners of the buildings are making eco-gardens in the residential buildings to pass time and family members stop by to help the owners take care of the garden...
The crimes committed during the war of independence in Bangladesh in 1971 were truly horrific. Three million people are believed to have lost their lives, 200,000 women are said to have been raped and some 10 million people fled to India. The international community did next to nothing to stop the fighting and the US Administration under President Richard Nixon even backed Pakistan, despite the blatant violations of human rights it committed against its opponents in former East Pakistan.
These events belong without doubt to the darkest moments of South Asia's history. But as if that was not enough the legal process of establishing the responsibility of these crimes came to a halt in 1975 when the founding father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated. At such times de...
Switzerland is one of the world’s most successful economies, scoring highly in areas from innovation to institutional excellence. So why is our record less stellar when it comes to gender equality? Switzerland’s performance in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap 2014 Report is a case in point. We came first in the Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, but only 11
th in terms of closing the gender gap. A closer look reveals an even starker contrast between economic success and gender bias. In the wealthy canton of Zurich, for example, women earn on average 24% less than men. In the financial sector, one of Switzerland’s signature industries, the difference is an astonishing 32%. To make matters worse, Swiss women are more at risk of poverty than men.
Nobel Peace Prize winner and microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus is a champion of big ideas and small loans. Muhammad Yunus, the founding father of “microcredit” and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, is in New York City this week to take part in the annual Clinton Global Initiative meetings.
Yunus, a Bangladeshi and founder of the Grameen Bank, which makes loans to people too poor to offer collateral in return, is serving as one the judges for the Hult Prize, in which six teams of college and university students — the survivors of a rigorous worldwide winnowing — will present their ideas for sustainable businesses designed to help the poor.
In the previous fiscal year ending June 2014, Bangladesh received more than $700 million in aid from its development partners.
But that could’ve been more, if donors were able to meet their $5.35 billion total planned disbursements, according to the country’s newly launched aid database, which further reveals that while grants comprised the majority of disbursements last year, loans now account for the bulk of current aid spending.
But just how accurate is this data?
A government official involved in the management of the Aid Information Management System told Devex the current information in the database actually came from donors themselves. Up to 17 of Bangladesh’s development partners have agreed to manually enter data into the system, which then automatically generates that...
