Human Rights have always been an issue which was neglected in Bangladesh, regardless of which party was on the throne, usually the Bangladesh Awami League or the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, if we don’t count the military regimes. But there was probably no time in history when Human Rights were violated on the scale it was violated in the last 15 years of the Awami League regime. More interesting(or frustrating) might be the fact that this violation of human rights enjoyed enthusiastic support not only from the party politicians, leaders and activists, but it also had its fair share of intellectual and cultural defenders. So it was a sigh of relief from the Human Rights activists when the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) was allowed to operate independently for the first time after the historic 36th July(5th August 2024), when the autocratic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country following a mass uprising. Furthermore, per the latest news, the Interim Government of Bangladesh has signed a three-year MoU(Memorandum of Understanding) to set up a country office to facilitate the protection of human rights in the country. However, everyone doesn’t seem to agree.
When the news of the country mission being set up was first published, there were outcries against it from different political sections of the country, which are usually at odds with each other on other issues. From the right-wing spectrum of the political parties, Hefazot-E-Islam, Khelafot Majlish Bangladesh, and Islami Andolon Bangladesh have expressed concerns over the OHCR Office, and from the left-wing spectrum, the Communist Party of Bangladesh has critiqued the move by the Government. More recently, leaders of the National Citizens’ Party have also questioned how the Government approved this move without the consensus of the political parties.
On the surface, however, their criticisms are a bit unexpected. In the bloodthirsty regime of Sheikh Hasina, these political parties have faced repressions which were clear violations of Human Rights, including freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. In many, many cases, the homes of the opposition party activists were burnt down. Forceful disappearances had also become a reality for many activists who dared to question the state. Phenomena such as “Aynaghor”(Mirror House), a place where citizens were tortured and kept without any sort of legal warrants, were an open secret during the regime, but became well-known only after the 5th August. There is also the fact that during the bloody uprising of July 2024, there were flagrant human rights violations all over the country to shut down the students and protesting masses, which was fact-checked and documented by this very OHCHR in February 2025. Another notable mention would be the treatment of Chittagong Hill Tracts citizens by the law enforcement agencies.
Usually, the civil society is the first to respond when these violations occur, and protest against the Government for doing so. But unfortunately, our civil society leaders – intellectuals, university professors, artists and journalists among them – chose to defend the regime instead of the human rights of the oppressed. They bought into the narrative that this regime had the “right” to violate the human rights of its opponents because they were supposedly “anti-state” and “anti-liberation war”. They forgot the simple fact that Human Rights are called “Universal” for a reason – it applies to every human being on earth. They allowed the erosion of human rights to continue in the name of protecting the “sovereignty” of the country. In other cases, human rights were to be disregarded because they were “western propaganda” to control Bangladesh.
The National Human Rights Commission was also a failure in this regard. As the national institution for the advocacy of human rights and their protection, it is baffling to observe how spectacularly it failed to protect the human rights of Bangladeshi citizens. Therefore, it can be argued that to build these institutions, which have been broken completely because of their subservience to the regime over the last 15 years, another independent and expert body is needed. According to the official statement, that seems to be the goal as well. As it says, “The purpose of the mission is to provide training and technical assistance to government institutions and civil society organisations.” And how would it do that? Through “capacity-building, legal support, and institutional strengthening.”
It seems, therefore, straightforward that this office would be, at least in theory, a blessing for Bangladesh overall. We do need strong institutions that would protect human rights for all, to ensure that the violation of human rights that was seen during the Sheikh Hasina regime doesn’t repeat again.
But there are still caveats that need to be addressed.
The first one is the fact that the MoU includes the indemnity for all officials involved with the OHCHR. This indemnity includes protection from being arrested and the seizure of personal and official documents. The local officials who have been employed permanently would also enjoy this privilege, which is supposed to continue even after their involvement with the UN ends(Prothom Alo, 19th July 2025).
Almost all aspects of this policy are being questioned. And while it is generally agreed that international actors who are involved with OHCHR are justified in getting an indemnity, it is unclear why the local officials would get that too, and why this is supposed to continue even after they discontinue work with the UN. This rule runs the risk of being too permissive for the officials, especially the local ones. But should they be granted this much leverage? This is a point of contention that must be clearly dealt with by the Interim Government of Bangladesh.
This criticism can be tied to the concerns that the parties have raised in this issue as well. While the Awami Regime was in the wrong to disregard human rights because it was “western propaganda”, this doesn’t excuse the fact that, in many cases, Human Rights have indeed been tools of imperialism in many parts of the world. Especially in the age of neoliberalism, “Human Rights” have been used as the moral logic of the free market, which denies the self-determination of the post-colonial countries. So, it is a valid concern to be raised when the office of OHCHR is being set up in the country. Would OHCHR be a vehicle for imperial order, or be genuinely interested in protecting the human rights of Bangladeshi citizens? Hopefully, it would be the latter.
Another elephant in the room is the role of OHCHR when a live genocide is going on – in Gaza by the Israeli apartheid regime. There is a popular question among the masses: What is the role of the UN if it cannot stop a literal genocide from occurring? This exposes the clear power imbalance which hides in the guise of human rights – the powerful countries, namely the United States and Israel, can violate human rights as much as they want, and there is no superior international body to stop them. While officials like Francesca Albanese, who is currently appointed as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, have harshly criticised Israeli occupation and have become Persona Non Grata in the USA, the USA has seldom been forced to follow through.
But the same precedents can also be used the other way around – having an OHCHR office does not mean that a country has to sacrifice its own decisions just because OHCHR says so. So, as much as the fear of human rights being an imperial tool is true, this is not enough justification to oppose the establishment either. Another issue that has been raised is the social and religious values that are supposed to be hurt by the human rights laws. In a mostly conservative society, some laws would indeed be hard to implement. However, in most cases, OHCHR hasn’t been able to be too radical with its policies. Therefore, it is less likely that the policies that are being debated would be implemented at all. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(UDHR) includes the rights of LGBTQ+ persons. Burkina Faso is one of those countries where the OHCHR office has been running since 2021, and it is a period before the rise of Ibrahim Traore. Even still, Burkina Faso hasn’t passed any laws regarding the legal recognition of LGBTQ+ citizens, and under Traore, this repression has only escalated. This shows that OHCHR’s presence doesn’t actually matter that much in these cases. Therefore, it can be argued that those who are fearful that traditional social and religious values would be eroded in the name of human rights are mostly wrong.
To develop as a liberal democracy, Bangladesh needs to have a strong emphasis on human rights, where citizens can enjoy individual liberties and justice. Most importantly, these rights need to be protected in a country like Bangladesh, where political civility towards opposition party members is almost non-existent, at least not seen in recent history. The fact that human rights are truly universal needs to be established. Yes, this has to be done within permissible limits that are bestowed by our sovereignty. But it has to be done, nonetheless. The road to hell is always paved with good intentions, they say. Hopefully, the decision to establish OHCHR office in Bangladesh would defy this statement.
Sadman Ahmed Siam is an independent columnist and a student of the Islamic University of Technology.
