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Human Rights

Girls at risk as Bangladesh mulls lowering marriage age, says HRW

Millions of girls are at risk if the Bangladeshi government goes ahead with a proposal to lower the age of marriage to 16, Human Rights Watch warned on Monday. The impoverished South Asian nation has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, despite a three-decade-old law which bans marriage for girls under the age of 18. HRWHuman Rights Watch (HRW) said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government was now considering an amendment to the Child Marriage Restraint Act, which would also lower the age of marriage of men to 18 from 21. “Setting the a...

Bangladesh home to 6pc world’s poor in 2011

World Bank-IMF study for 2011, however, says the pace of reduction in absolute poverty has been substantial; report stresses skills training for youth as key Bangladesh had six per cent world’s poor while India was home to about a third of the world’s poor in 2011, according to a progress report on various social indicators from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), issued on Wednesday. In other words, the highest number of the poor lived in India in 2011. world's poorChina, whose population is more than our billio...

Millennium Development Goals expire next year … What then?  

If you could come up with goals for the world to aspire to over the next 15 years, what would they be? What should we focus on? The United Nations is conducting an online survey, asking people from around the world what matters most to them. More than 2.5-million people have responded, with everything from better transport and roads to affordable and nutritious food under consideration. So far, the top global priority is better education, followed by better healthcare and an honest and responsive government, with reliable energy and climate change at the bottom. But to make a more considered list, we need much more information on what solutions exist, their cost and their likelihood of success to better prioritise these goals.

BPC joint letter commending alliance for worker safety

The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety (Alliance) has made great progress toward protecting workers and improving garment factory safety, say former Senators George Mitchell (D-ME), Co-founder of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), BPC Senior Fellow, in a letter issued by the BPC to Alliance Independent Chair Ellen Tauscher. The BPC, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank actively promoting bipartisanship and respectful dialogue, helped give rise to the Alliance in 2013 through a series of discussions convened by Senators Mitchell and Snowe. The non-profit was instrumental in laying out the aggressive timeline and milestones for the Alliance’s five-year effort.

Women at the center of our economic activity: Yunus

Muhammad Yunus

 In the past 60 years or so, we have seen capitalism reach its peak. We have seen the socialist economies fall away and move rapidly toward capitalism. This has undoubtedly brought unprecedented wealth and prosperity in many parts of the world and to many people. At the same time, millions — if not billions — have been left behind. dr. YunusWe have seen the deep financial crises grip the world economy since 2008, and we have seen huge numbers of people becoming unemployed even in the so-called prospero...

Ilford youth worker to help youngsters in Bangladesh

A youth worker will be travelling across the world to help vulnerable young people next month. Elizabeth Olaniyi, 21, has been nominated for the Recorder/Redbridge Rotary Young Citizen Awards in recognition of her hard work as a volunteer. IIfordElizabeth, who lives in Ilford, is heading to Bangladesh for 10 weeks with Y Care International as part of the International Citizen Service (ICS), a non-profit organisation with works to help young people in more than 20 countries around the world. She said: “I will be working on development project...
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