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Millennium Development Goals in Bangladesh

A combination of generous international aid since 1990, a dynamic civil society culture and sympathetic government policies has created a generally positive environment for development indicators, illustrated especially by the attainment of gender equality in school enrolment, a rare achievement in South Asia. The headline poverty benchmark for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of $1 per day has fallen significantly from 59% in the baseline year to 36%, whilst child mortality has come down from 151 to 80 per 1000. In these areas, progress is more rapid than in neighbouring India or Pakistan. Government budgets (as a percentage of 2007/08 national income) for health (6.3%) and education (14%) are rising whilst food and cash safety net schemes are in place for the poorest families.

Bangladeshi girl in school © Ron Gilling/Panos Pictures / People & the Planet

Unfortunately, beneath the surface of these promising trends lies a stubborn hardcore of extreme poverty in Bangladesh which is not responding to government or NGO programmes. Possibly as many as 35 million people are in this category - 25% of the population – unable to provide themselves with sufficient food, creating widespread severe malnutrition, and overwhelming social safety nets. With nearly 50% of children underweight, the child mortality rate has not fallen in recent years. A 2007 independent civil society report describes maternal mortality as a “major blot in progress towards the MDGs” with only 9% of births attended by a qualified health-worker and rates failing to improve since 2000. Although most children take advantage of free primary education by entering schools, the combination of poor teaching quality and the pressures of poverty has rocketed the drop-out rate to an alarming 47%. Wide divergence in poverty indicators between urban and rural areas and between regions adds to the complexity of analysis.

It is abundantly clear therefore that many of the MDGs will not be achieved in Bangladesh without specific policy intervention and increased funding. The Director of the Millennium Project, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, has suggested an MDG price tag for Bangladesh of $4 billion per annum, far more than current levels of aid. An alternative perspective is the suggestion that the Goals cannot be achieved without universal access to electricity. Current coverage is barely more than 20%. The government’s target of access for all by 2020 is a vision that has been priced at $16 billion.

Health in Bangladesh

Bangladeshi woman and child © Shahidul Alam/Drik / New Internationalist

Although the government provides reasonable coverage of community health workers and health centres, there are worries over the quality of staff training and to the question of payment for treatment which is out of the question for the poorest families. A World Bank 2007 report pointed to the fact that all health workers are engaged by central government and lack a sufficient culture of accountability to their patients. The report pointed to NGO models of health provision which work closely with village communities – the NGO sector is heavily engaged in both health and education programmes.

Whilst the country claims to be on target for the MDG to provide clean water with over 70% coverage in both rural and urban areas, it cannot escape the alarming and as yet insoluble problem caused by the exposure of arsenic-bearing rocks in tube-wells. This is not unique to Bangladesh but has its most concentrated impact with over 80 million people considered to be at high risk of arsenic-related diseases which kill an estimated 270,000 each year. Provision of adequate sanitation is less than 30% in village areas and requires major attention - efforts are particularly focused on poor facilities in schools.

Lack of robust healthcare in Bangladesh has also contributed to concerns about HIV infection which has increased significantly in recent years amongst the most vulnerable groups, especially drug-users and sex workers. Although the prevalence rate is below 1%, the absence of testing facilities and dubious standards of data collection reflect a lack of political leadership. By contrast, the emergence of a small number of cases of polio in Bangladesh in 2006 brought the decisive response of a massive vaccination programme for 24 million children in 2007.
Politics in Bangladesh

One very fundamental reason for doubts over MDG prospects in Bangladesh is the continued deterioration in standards of governance to a level which is testing the patience of the donor community to its limits. The country has for years languished at or close to the very bottom of the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International and life for ordinary citizens is punctuated by demands for bribes, draining the formal economy by an estimated 2% of GDP.

The most recent general election in 2001 was won by a coalition of 4 parties headed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Khaleda Zia who became prime minister. The opposition Awami League (AWL) was led by Sheikh Hasina. Despite the advantage of a population broadly united by a common Bengali language and dominant Muslim identity, the conduct of government has been driven more by dynastic feuding than policy debate, to the detriment of the poor and denial of their democratic rights.

Throughout 2006 the AWL organized strikes demanding review of the electoral register and later questioning the neutrality of the caretaker administration which, under the Bangladesh constitution, took over from the outgoing government 3 months before the election due in January 2007 . By early January a state of near anarchy forced members of the caretaker administration to resign and declare a state of emergency. The replacement interim head of government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, appointed a new Election Commission with the formidable task of creating an electoral register from scratch. Bold initiatives to employ digital technology are under way.

The new leader has also pledged to root out corruption, reviving the moribund Anti-Corruption Commission which has since charged hundreds of senior political figures with graft. The clean-up has reached the very top with both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina currently detained under serious charges. Whilst the military has been engaged to support police in this work and in other aspects of the interim administration, as yet there are few signs of moves towards a military coup which would turn the democratic clock back to 1990.

The state of emergency prohibits any political activity beyond indoor meetings of up to 50 people and forbids the media from covering political issues. This suppression taken together with the sidelining of past leaders has created a

A BRAC school © Canadian International Development Agency

political vacuum which may raise difficulties in rekindling the democratic process. Hopes that the popular Nobel laureate, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, might form a political party were dashed when he mothballed the idea due to lack of support. One positive step has been the announcement that in future judges will be appointed by the Supreme Court rather than the government.

Civil society in general has flourished in a climate of healthy aid flows although the survival of individual organizations has been very sensitive to sudden changes in donor priorities. The sector is led by the monolithic Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) which has become the size of a government ministry and may be the world’s largest NGO.
Human Rights in Bangladesh

The BNP government under Khaleda Zia made little effort to introduce legislation to improve the disappointing state of human rights in Bangladesh. It tolerated escalating levels of political violence, in particular a succession of unsolved murders of members of the opposition Awami League. Human rights observers have been concerned that heavy-handed actions of police and security forces have been conducted with impunity, none more so than those of the notorious Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) set up in 2004 to fight crime. Human Rights Watch considers that the RAB “has become a government death squad” referring to 350 cases of torture and extra-judicial killings. The UN special envoy on extra-judicial killings, Philip Alston, has accused these Bangladesh forces of murder.

The violence unsettles donors, nervous about the possibility that extremist Islamic groups may emerge from the chaos. However, the government appears to have had some success in avoiding this scenario through its banning of the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMB) in 2006 and eventual arrest and execution of its leaders.

Camel jockey in United Arab Emirates © Anti-Slavery International

In a country where standards of public life are at a premium, the protection of basic human rights amongst the underprivileged is bound to be at risk. This has its most entrenched expression in the use of child labour in traditional craft industries, some of them ranked as hazardous occupations. Estimates suggest that as much as one fifth of the entire Bangladesh workforce is comprised of children as attempts to curb the problem by government and non-governmental organizations make no headway.

Apart from state-controlled Radio Bangladesh and Bangladesh Television, there is diversity of media sources through satellite TV and privately owned newspapers. But the security of journalists themselves is under threat from the increased criminalisation of Bangladesh politics. The Committee to Protect Journalists has declared Bangladesh to be one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the profession, especially those reporting on corruption or crime.
The Economy in Bangladesh

Ironically, many Bangladeshis feel that country’s dependence on generous foreign aid may itself feed a culture of dishonesty – through its tendency to create a micro-economy managed by NGO staff, politicians, bureaucrats, consultants and contractors - all wrestling with the potential conflict of personal benefit in the name of development and poverty alleviation. Some NGOs have been accused of taking money from donors whilst doing little for the intended beneficiaries and not being held accountable.

Signing a white band in Bangladesh © Millennium Campaign

Not that conventional instruments of economic growth have been any more successful; years of shoehorning liberal market policy reforms into Bangladesh may have succeeded in boosting traditional measures of growth but have also aggravated divisions between rich and poor, and between urban and rural communities – the slums of Dhaka alone have swelled from 1.5 million to 3.4 million over the last decade through migration from the villages. This process is likely to continue as 70% of the population remains dependent on agriculture, an unsustainable scenario in one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Recent global debt relief initiatives sadly carry no benefit to Bangladesh. The country has a track record of prompt debt servicing and does not qualify for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative - despite a burden of international debt believed to exceed $100 per citizen of Bangladesh.

Muhammad Yunus

On a more positive note, Bangladesh is the home of microcredit, an economic model for creating livelihoods for the poor, and women especially, that has spread across the developing world. The pioneering work of the Grameen Bank, and its founder Dr. Muhammad Yunus, has been recognized through the award of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, an unprecedented recognition of the contribution of poverty alleviation to the prevention of conflict.
The Environment in Bangladesh

Bangladesh lacks the luxury of capacity to devise and enforce environmental regulations on a scale remotely commensurate with its needs. Densely populated cities experience a damaging range of health hazards while natural resources in rural regions are eroded by the demands of subsistence agriculture.

Bangladesh has one of the lowest per capita levels of energy consumption in the world yet the country has been named in reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the most vulnerable to rising sea levels. A one metre rise could wipe out 20% of the country’s land mass, creating 30 million environmental refugees, perhaps as early as 2050. Climate predictions also envisage shorter but more severe monsoons, longer periods of drought, and more violent tropical storms, creating lower crop yields and increasing salinisation.

Flood in Bangladesh © Kamrul Hassan/Machizo

The low-lying delta lands of Bangladesh in which 30-40 million poor people have their homes have long been prone to serious flooding and devastating cyclones. The serious floods in 2007 closely followed by Cyclone Sidr have been described as the worst for at least a decade. If a structure of governance that is truly representative of its long-suffering people can emerge in Bangladesh, tough questions are bound to be asked about the responsibility for climate change and the potential liability of the great fossil fuel consumer countries conveniently located far from the rising seas of the Bay of Bengal.



Sayeed Ahmad is a human rights lawyer in practice at the District and Sessions Judge Court in Dhaka and with a leading human rights organization - Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK).

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