Realising the Right to Development in Bangladesh: Progress and Challenges

By signing and ratifying various human rights instruments, the State of Bangladesh has committed itself to pursuing socio-economic policies in a way that would promote its people’s right to development, understood as integrated realisation of the whole range of human rights—including economic, social and cultural rights on the one hand and civil and political rights on the other. The paper first develops a methodology for answering the question, and then applies it to three specific rights—viz., the right to food, the right to health and the right to education—by drawing upon three case studies on the realisation of these rights in Bangladesh. The major areas of concern relate to the principles of equity, participation and accountability. Although successive governments have paid lip service to all three of these principles, the policies they have pursued in practice have actually undermined them more often than not.