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
April 20, 2018
Humanitarian response, at a cost
An elephant walks through Kutupalong camp in the morning, in between the huts it easily dwarfs, while all around is the worried muttering of the camp inhabitants uncertain as to what to do. A crowd of Rohingya men and boys follow it at a distance, trying to shoo it away while others crouch on the roofs to watch.
April 13, 2018
Is social media inciting violence in Myanmar?
A Facebook post by a young Burmese man in September last year: “I am always honing my sword to kill you shit kalar [derogatory term]. You kalar are son of bitch, son of swine.” Accompanying the post is several pictures of him posing with a sword.
April 6, 2018
Raising a child with autism
Rupa shows me the broken glass of a bookshelf in the bedroom, which her son Rakin had shattered by banging his head against it, not half an hour before I entered their home in Mohammadpur last week. He had done something similar last year, which had required 10 stitches on his face. This time, luckily, Rakin had no injuries. His mother was still shaken, the accident a vivid reminder that her world can be turned upside down in a second, though she works hard all day to ensure a regular routine for her autistic son.
March 23, 2018
Combating The Chikungunya Outbreak
At a time when the city is once again experiencing a surge of mosquitoes, residents are concerned about a resurgence of the diseases they carry. The mosquitoes biting us at all hours of day and night though are largely of the Culex variety, which while bothersome, does not bear disease. Aedes however causes dengue and worryingly, chikungunya, which crippled many in the city for some time last year.
March 16, 2018
War, in all its suffering
"Most children have two whole legs and two whole arms but this little six-year-old that Dinesh was carrying had already lost one leg, the right one from the lower thigh down, and was now about to lose his right arm.” Anuk Arudpragasam's powerful debut novel “The Story of a Brief Marriage” starts with this haunting description of a shrapnel-struck child being brought to a makeshift clinic and about to undergo
March 8, 2018
What it means to be a woman in the workplace
It is rare for women to be at the top, period. And even rarer for that woman to have worked their way to the top—more commonly, those who hold privileged positions often inherit their family businesses. Here, we feature women in diverse industries who have worked their way to the top, in a man’s world.
February 16, 2018
AGAINST ALL ODDS
On the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11, Star Weekend profiled several prominent
February 9, 2018
Censorship and the Boi Mela
“From a love for our language, for the Liberation War, and for the nation has arisen a shared sense of democracy and freedom of
February 2, 2018
How well are female workers protected by the law?
Equal pay for equal work, the right to form a union—these, among other standards, protect workers from exploitation in the
January 26, 2018
Tenants: At the mercy of landlords
Ananya Paul, 26, a working professional in Dhaka had an eye-opening experience of religious harmony (or lack thereof) while house-hunting in Dhaka. In 2015, she and her in-laws went searching for an apartment in the Banasree area.
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