Housing and land rights: the camp dwelling Urdu-speaking community in Bangladesh

There are about 16,0000 Urdu-speaking Muslim people in Bangladesh living in 161 camps since 1971. They are also called Biharis or stranded Pakistanis as they emigrated from various Indian states during partition in 1947. They supported the Pakistani army in the liberation war of Bangladesh and consequently labeled as traitors or Pakistani collaborators. As a result they were denied of basic human rights and forced to live in slum-like camps.

This study on the housing and land rights situation of the camp-dwelling Urdu-speaking community was carried out as a Fulbright research project supported by the US Department of State. The purpose of this study was to investigate the present day living situation in the camps; 38 years after the camps were first constructed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and 2 years after the Dhaka High Court made its landmark judgment that restored the community’s voter rights in Bangladesh.

The primary research questions are:

• How has the High Court judgment affected the community’s housing and land rights situation? Has it led to improvements in their living conditions and social integration, or has it made them more vulnerable to eviction and social isolation?
• How can the community be further rehabilitated and integrated into Bangladeshi society, and in what ways can stakeholders support this process?