AFAD 2018 Desk Calendar is now available

The AFAD 2018 Desk Calendar is now available at the AFAD office, Rooms 310-311 Phil. Social Science Center building, Commonwealth Ave., Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines, Tel. No. 4546759.

ODHIKAR: Human Rights Monitoring Report

November 1 – 30, 2017

Odhikar believes that democracy is not merely a process of electing a ruler; it is the result of the peoples’ struggle for inalienable rights, which become the fundamental premise to constitute the State. Therefore, the individual freedoms and democratic aspirations of the citizens – and consequently, peoples’ collective rights and responsibilities - must be the foundational principles of the State.

Odhikar: Statement in Commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 25th November 2017

Violence against women is endemic in Bangladesh. Women and girls are subjected to domestic violence, rape, dowry and its related violence, acid violence, stalking and sexual harassment, etc. As per a 2015 survey of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, more than 80% of married women in the country are abused at least once in their married life, be it
physically, sexually, financially or emotionally.

New Age: A law and a tribunal needed to fight enforced disappearances

Published: 00:05, Nov 20,2017 | Updated: 00:08, Nov 20,2017

POLICE investigators saying that they have found no evidence of any criminal gang being involved in the abduction of North South University teacher Mubashar Hasan Caesar, which took place on November 7, points to a pertinent, yet concerning issue. The teacher, who is an anti-extremism analyst, was picked up from in front of the IDB Building in the capital city 10 minutes after he had left the building. The incident, like any other incidents of enforced disappearance, caused a stir, with family, friends, rights and civic groups demanding that the government should find him out. He still remains untraced. But now that the police have fund no ‘criminal gang’ being involved in the incident, it is the duty of the government and the law enforcement agencies to find out who the people were that have criminally picked him up and where he has been kept. On the other front, Aniruddha Kumar Roy, a businessman and honorary consul of Belarus to Bangladesh, who went missing on August 27, has finally reached, or has been re hed, near his house at Gulshan in the capital. Aniruddha seems to be one of the few of about 402 people who, as rights group Odhikar puts it, disappeared between January 2009 and October 2017 and returned.