Rethinking international aid practices in Bangladesh
While the pandemic was a first in recent times, there has been an international aid system in place for decades now to deal with the fallout of war, hunger, poverty, refugees, and forced displacement.
3y ago
LAILA NUR: A force of resilience
Laila Nur first stood up against the Pakistan government as a schoolgirl of only 15, just about to sit for her SSC exams in 1948.
4y ago
Lost decades in Rohingya camps
Long before August 2017, there were Rohingya refugees who lived in camps in Cox’s Bazar, who had left Myanmar decades ago.
4y ago
A city free of fear: what women voters want
A 21-year-old DU student was raped and tortured in a notoriously dark stretch of the Airport Road in Kurmitola on the evening of January 5. The lone suspect, who was arrested a few days later, had allegedly raped and mugged other women near the spot in the past.
4y ago
The misleading claims
Suu Kyi: Please allow me to clarify the term clearance operation. Its meaning has been distorted. As early as the 1950s has been used against communists. It simply means to clear an area of insurgents or terrorists.
4y ago
THE LAST HUSTLE
The soft light of the setting sun illuminates the entire section every time I walk in, mostly because I AM ALWAYS LATE. On one side white balloons hang, on another side a dart board.
4y ago
“I never start writing until I can hear the voices of the main characters in my head”
I always had a desire to write fiction from school days onwards, but ‘to be a writer’ seemed like an unattainable goal.
4y ago
Lost in documentation
A long-awaited and yet-to-be released ‘Ethno-Linguistic Survey of Bangladesh’ identifies 14 indigenous languages on the verge of extinction. Completed in 2015, this is the first large-scale linguistic survey undertaken in the country since the colonial-era ‘Linguistic Survey of India’ by George Abraham Grierson in 1928.
4y ago
October 19, 2018
A novel crisscrossing cultures and time
The Storm is a tale of multiple compelling characters from around the world but all tied back to a crucial time and place in South Asia—a storm based on the real 1970 Bhola cyclone.
October 5, 2018
Documenting the abuse
Testimonies gathered by the UN, various non-governmental organisations, and foreign government fact-finding teams in Bangladesh are being used to get legal justice for the Rohingya
September 28, 2018
The short story
Short stories are in. Or is the short story dead? Is it seeing a resurgence? The genre seems to be in need of constant justification despite established and novice writers alike constantly churning out short stories.
September 7, 2018
Chatgaya vs. Rohingya
A multitude of languages can be heard around the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar. There are the Rohingya refugees themselves who speak Rohingya; some also speak Burmese.
September 2, 2018
The coordination conundrum
A section of the Kutupalong-Balukhali camp is visibly different from most other parts of the camps. The hill is dotted with shacks in close proximity as usual, but which have sturdy leakproof roofs and extra tarpaulin sheets covering the walls to protect from the monsoon rains.
September 2, 2018
The fight for Rohingya rights
Deep in the Kutupalong refugee camp is the headquarters of an organisation calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights.
August 10, 2018
Bruised and battered
18-year-old Faisal Mahmud, a student of class XII, was injured when a truck ran over him near Shanir Akhra on August 1, while he and his friends were checking the licences of vehicles on that road.
August 3, 2018
Literature by women—for women or for all?
In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath writes about a young woman, Esther Greenwood, experiencing the publishing industry on a summer internship, as well as life in New York City, for the first time.
July 27, 2018
Undocumented in Europe
The number of female workers departing Bangladesh is on an upward trajectory, 1,21, 925 in 2017, according to Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) data. The stories of female migrant workers in the Middle East have been well documented as have those of male migrant workers in Europe.
July 13, 2018
Return to more of the same for the Rohingya
A 'secret' memorandum of understanding (MoU) between UN agencies and the Myanmar government, a draft of which has been leaked online, revealed that Rohingya refugees cannot expect much change back home on their proposed return. While the UN is yet to publicly release the final MoU, the fact that the Rohingya themselves had not been consulted has been criticised by the Rohingya community.
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