Reports

The 57-page report, “‘Where No Sun Can Enter’: A Decade of Enforced Disappearances in Bangladesh,” finds that, despite credible and consistent evidence that Bangladesh security forces routinely commit enforced disappearances, the ruling Awami League has ignored calls by donor governments, the UN, human rights organizations, and civil society to address the culture of impunity. Alongside the report, Human Rights Watch created a webpage tracking and profiling the cases of 86 victims in Bangladesh who were forcibly disappeared and who remain missing.

The 58-page report, “‘An Island Jail in the Middle of the Sea’: Bangladesh’s Relocation of Rohingya Refugees to Bhasan Char,” finds that Bangladesh authorities transferred many refugees to the island without full, informed consent and have prevented them from returning to the mainland. While the government says it wants to move at least 100,000 people to the silt island in the Bay of Bengal to ease overcrowding in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, humanitarian experts have raised concerns that insufficient measures are in place to protect against severe cyclones and tidal surges. Refugees on the island reported inadequate health care and education, onerous movement restrictions, food shortages, a lack of livelihood opportunities, and abuses by security forces

The 65-page report, “‘I Sleep in My Own Deathbed’: Violence against Women and Girls in Bangladesh,” draws on 50 interviews to document the obstacles to realizing the government’s goal of a society without violence against women and children. Human Rights Watch found that despite some important advances, the government response remains deeply inadequate, barriers to reporting assault or seeking legal recourse are frequently insurmountable, and services for survivors are in short supply.

This report documents how Bangladesh prohibits aid groups in the refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar district from providing Rohingya children with accredited or formal education. There is no secondary-level education, and groups are barred from teaching the Bengali language and using the Bangladesh curriculum. Rohingya children have no opportunity to enroll in or continue their education at private or public schools outside the refugee camps.

This report identifies key practices by clothing companies that fuel abusive cost-cutting methods by factories that harm workers. Many global brands tout their commitment to ensuring rights-respecting workplaces in the factories that produce their goods, but undercut their efforts with relentless pressure on suppliers to drive down prices or produce faster, Human Rights Watch found. Many suppliers respond to those pressures with abusive cost-cutting methods that harm workers. One factory owner ruefully summarized the problem, saying that brands are “paying for a bus ticket and expecting to fly.”

This report is based on a May 2018 visit to Cox’s Bazar. Human Rights Watch found that the mega camp is severely overcrowded. The average usable space is 10.7 square meters per person, compared with the recommended international standard of 45 square meters per person. Densely packed refugees are at heightened risk of communicable diseases, fires, community tensions, and domestic and sexual violence. Bangladeshi authorities should relocate Rohingya refugees to smaller, less densely packed camps on flatter, accessible, nearby land within the same Ukhiya subdistrict where the mega camp is located, Human Rights Watch said.

This report details dozens of arbitrary arrests since the Information and Communication Technology Act 2006 was amended in 2013 to incorporate harsher penalties and allowing the police to make arrests without warrant. As of April 2018, the police had submitted 1,271 charge sheets to the Cyber Tribunal in Dhaka, claiming sufficient evidence to prosecute under section 57 of the ICT Act. 

This report found that at least 90 people were victims of enforced disappearance in 2016 alone. While most were produced in court after weeks or months of secret detention, Human Rights Watch documented 21 cases of detainees who were later killed, and nine others whose whereabouts remain unknown. 

This report documents abuses suffered by a group of hijras, when they were forced to undergo so-called medical examinations at a hospital in Dhaka, the capital, in 2015, as part of a government employment program. The medical exams were ordered as part of the routine government hiring procedure, but absent a clear procedure to identify and respect hijras, hospital staff responded based on their own personal biases.  Although a 2013 directive from the cabinet recognizes hijras as a third gender, the government has not developed rights-based procedures for changing their gender on official documents, leaving them open to abuse when they seek to assert their rights, Human Rights Watch found. 

This report calls upon Bangladesh authorities to order prompt, impartial, and independent investigations into all alleged “kneecappings” and other deliberate infliction of serious injuries by members of the security forces. The government should also invite the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN special rapporteurs on torture and extrajudicial executions to investigate “kneecappings” and other alleged acts of torture and make appropriate recommendations to ensure justice, accountability, and security force reform.

This report documents how Bangladesh’s health system largely ignores the impact of exposure to arsenic on people’s health. An estimated 43,000 people die each year from arsenic-related illness in Bangladesh, according to one study. The government identifies people with arsenic-related illnesses primarily via skin lesions, although the vast majority of those with arsenic-related illnesses don’t develop them. Those exposed are at significant risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and lung disease as a result, but many receive no health care at all.


 

This 134-page report is based on more than a hundred interviews conducted across the country, most of them with married girls, some as young as age 10. It documents the factors driving child marriage in Bangladesh – including poverty, natural disasters, lack of access to education, social pressure, harassment, and dowry.

This 78-page report is based on interviews with more than 160 workers from 44 factories, most of them making garments for retail companies in North America, Europe, and Australia.