The death of Sohagi Jahan Tonu, a university student at Comilla Victoria College, led to massive protests and a social media outcry. What prevented this from just being another rape and murder case in Bangladesh?
A blogger was convicted in Dhaka for his writing. A group of people who backed him in the press now faces the same charge. Why is this happening in Bangladesh?
Despite rising political violence in Bangladesh, the west has reserved its outrage for the murder of a secular Bangladeshi-American blogger. But his site tended to curtail rather than uphold free speech.
International outrage focussed on Bangladesh’s labour violations remains indifferent to a concurrent reality: the increased targeting of women and girls as subjects of political violence.
The wellbeing of outsourced workers in emerging countries is often linked to western ethical consumption but the aftermath of Rana Plaza has shown that union power at source is key.
After years of trade liberalisation, corporate self-regulation, and a global race-to-the-bottom, we need to consider what kinds of systemic reforms are needed to improve worker safety and welfare worldwide, and ask ourselves whether the disaster at Rana Plaza is the natural outcropping of a system
A year after the huge loss of mainly-female Bangladeshi garment workers’ lives at Rana Plaza, unions are still fighting for compensation for the victims, safety at work and a living wage
If the production of refugees was an industry, Myanmar would be among the world’s market leaders. And of all its products the Rohingya would be one of the most lucrative. A niche but growing market of global proportions, the culmination of decades of tireless endeavour to hone a specialist craft.
Greedy parties and fickle voters delay the advent of a healthy democracy.
Why were NGOs left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza factory collapse?
The right not to be enslaved is one of the two absolute human rights that cannot be violated on any ground whatsoever. However, 65 years after its denunciation, slavery continues to resist the corpus of human rights. Why the asymmetry ?
