Parliamentarians at IPU Assembly moots unity to combat terrorism

SALEEM SAMAD

Parliamentarians at the 136th Inter-Parliamentarian Union (IPU) are poised to adopt a resolution to deal with terrorism and militancy. Terrorism is a global phenomenon and is a threat to all countries.

The delegates of IPU are discussing to forge unity globally to combat terrorism, Secretary General Martin Chungong told the media at press briefing on Monday.

He said the Dhaka Assembly is expected to adopt three resolutions. The first is the role of parliament in preventing outside interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states and the second, promoting cooperation on SDGs with focus on women, and third emergency item resolution.

Parliamentarians are debating on two pressing issues. The first is non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nation states. The second is inclusive financing of women in development.

"Process is in progress in at the conference venue in Dhaka for global parliamentary community," said Chungong at the mega IPU conference in Dhaka.

The five-day IPU Assembly in progress from Saturday with the participation of over 1300  delegates from 131 member states of the century-old organization. The dignity of human rights, sovereignty and women's empowerment were agreed in the conference.

He said women in parliament are very less, IPU is advocating political empowerment of women.

Regarding terrorism, Chungong said that terror networks active in various countries are not localized. There is need for global parliamentary community prevents to fight terrorism, he remarked.

Regarding the general debate on Redressing Inequality: Delivering on dignity and well-being for All, Chungong said IPU will highlight an action-oriented proposal that parliaments are making here when the 136th assembly concludes, it will have a number of things that parliamentarians can follow up theses concretely and device a program to gain measurable achievements over reducing inequality.

"What I'm proposing in the strategy is a series of actions that will help the global parliamentary community prevent those things that lead to terrorism and militancy," IPU Secretary said.

Chungong said, "Violent extremism was born out of frustration, out of inequality in society, out of injustice, violation of human rights and lack of opportunity - so, those are the things we're addressing in the strategy to combat terrorism and militancy."

He said he will brief the executive committee today (Tuesday) on the strategy that the IPU devised to enable the parliamentary community worldwide to combat terrorism. "We shouldn't allow terrorism to occur before you do something about it."

"How parliaments can take practical actions at national and international levels to alleviate inequality and restore the dignity of human being in all aspects of social, political and economic arena," Chungong said.

The emergency item resolution will focus on famine affecting the population of Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Northern Kenya. This proposal was jointly placed by Belgium, the United Kingdom and Kenya.

Besides, the documents of outcomes of the general debate on 'redressing inequalities, delivering on dignity and wellbeing of all' will be adopted at the IPU Assembly on Wednesday, the last day of 136th IPU assembly.

First published in The Asian Age, April 4, 2017

Saleem Samad is an Ashoka Fellow (USA), an award winning investigative journalist and Special Correspondent of The Asian Age

In Bangladesh, the Steady Pursuit of Justice and Freedom

Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center (third from right), with Grameen Bank members.

Last week, at the invitation of my friend Muhammad Yunus, I traveled to Bangladesh, a truly humbling and inspiring experience. I met so many incredible people struggling to improve their country and their lives. I wrote a letter to my daughters about my travels, which follows:

Dear Cara, Mariah and Michaela,

Visiting Bangladesh has been a lifelong dream of mine, but all that I had heard about a people who love freedom so much that they have withstood great armies, famine and intractable poverty could not prepare me for what I've seen in the last three days. 

The Bengali patriots' courage and endurance in the face of the Pakistani army forty years ago is the stuff of legend in our family. I remember your Great Uncle Teddy telling us about his visit to the Calcutta refugee camps, where tens of thousands lived not in tents but in sewer pipes. The people in these camps had fled the mass killings -- some would say genocide -- that the United States had failed to stop, as the Nixon Administration's official policy was to choose our relationship with Pakistan over those who shared our love of freedom. Great Uncle Teddy promised to return when the country gained independence, and a few months later, he and Uncle Joe were among the first international visitors to the newborn country of Bangladesh.

Given what I'd heard from Uncle Teddy, I suppose I should not have been surprised by the inspiring people that my colleague Lydia Allen and I met in Bangladesh, people who endure extreme hardship for the freedom that they love and that they demand for their country.

In a small wooden room packed with women in bright saris, we met a proud shareholder of the Grameen Bank -- the transformative microlending institution founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus -- who borrowed 5,000 taka (about $80) and bought a rickshaw, and then 20,000 taka ($240) and bought a cow, and then 30,000 taka ($480) and bought land. Thanks to her hard work and the Grameen Bank, she now has a house full of furniture, a field full of food, water, a working toilet, and a television set. She saves 100 taka per month, and this year she will receive 100,000 taka ($750) from her savings.

We met a store owner and her husband, who borrowed from Grameen to buy solar panels, which have allowed them to expand their storefront and provide light to the brick house they share with three siblings and their in-laws. 

We met a young woman on a Grameen scholarship who will be the first woman in her family to go to college. She is majoring in computer science and plans to start a business in the IT sector that will transform her neighborhood.

We met ten women who sit on the board of the Grameen Bank, borrowers all. They're angry at the government and concerned for the future of the bank. The government recently ousted Dr. Yunus from the board of his own bank on the pretense that he had overstayed the mandatory retirement age of sixty. Then, finding no other legal way to do so, the government cajoled the rubber-stamp Parliament to change a banking law for the specific purpose of ousting the impoverished women from the Grameen board and replacing them with ruling party toadies, who, the women fear, will transform the multibillion-dollar bank that has helped so many escape poverty into just another slush fund for kleptocrats to draw upon. 

We met a dozen women, many of them lawyers, all of them leaders of NGOs that address pressing issues like indigenous rights, due process of law, violence against women, dowry battles, rape, and environmental justice. Many have been arrested, and many live under daily threat. One said her husband had been "disappeared" in apparent retaliation for her work. They are scared of the nation's security forces, which are known for kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial executions. And yet they wake up in the morning, kiss their children and their husbands, and return to work, a daily show of quiet courage.

We met a woman who worked at the collapsed Rana Plaza sweatshop who said she never wants to work in the apparel industry again. I met another who said the same thing, but added, "But we are poor, and we must work."

They were among a crowd lining the hallway and sitting at intake tables at the offices of the Rana Plaza Claims Administration, the nonprofit group charged with addressing reparations for the victims of the Rana Plaza collapse. It is an impressive operation, manned by a team of dedicated professionals in labor, law and computer science, intent on making payouts to every single victim for physical and psychological injuries and to the scores of dependents who lost the family breadwinner in the tragedy. They have $17 million to hand out, and calculate the need will be closer to $40 million, but the fund is voluntary and no law compels the brands to pay their fair share. While some have been generous, too many others have refused to participate, because no law compels them to do so.

We met U.S. Ambassador Dan Mozena, a man singularly committed to advancing U.S. interests abroad by protecting basic rights and increasing the prosperity of the people of Bangladesh. He invited me to visit the Edward M. Kennedy Center and the Ted Cafe, a gathering place created by the embassy for NGOs to meet and speak in safety, and for young people to learn about our country. 

Michaela, the book shelf of one entire room was jammed with SAT prep books, looking all too familiar. Thanks to Ambassador Mozena, you will have plenty of competition from young Bangladeshis as you apply for college, determined to gain an education at U.S. schools, and return to their homeland with new hope for the future.

We met Adil Rahman Khan, who has organized a team of 400-plus human rights monitors and defenders across the country to investigate and report on violations of voting rights; on crackdowns on free speech and assembly; and on torture, extrajudicial execution, disappearances, and more--holding the government accountable for its failures to protect the freedom that the Bangladeshi people won at such great cost 40 years ago. Adil seeks accountability in a country where 197 anti-corruption officers are presently under investigation for corruption themselves. For his actions, Adil lives under a constant threat of death. Last year, after issuing a report documenting a massacre by government forces of 61 protestors, he was taken away and held without trial for 62 days in a filthy cell, ridden with bedbugs and rotten food.

How proud Uncle Teddy would be to know that this man, who personifies all the values that Teddy and Grandpa Bobby so admired, will receive the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award later this year.

And, of course, we met with my dear friend Dr. Yunus. He invited us to come to Dhaka for Social Business Day, where people from scores of countries across the globe gathered to share their designs and experiences with creating businesses which seek not profits for shareholders but solutions to problems like housing or food access.

You were still in diapers when Dr. Yunus came to our home nearly 15 years ago and I interviewed him for my book Speak Truth to Power. I have always been struck by the sense of peace and joy he conveys in the many lectures I have since seen him deliver. But I never appreciated how incredible that was until I saw him in Bangladesh. He is under unremitting pressure from a government that seeks to destroy all he has given his life to build. And yet he endures, and invites us to somehow find peace amidst the chaos in our lives and find our joy through service. His steady bearing reminded me of these lines from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If":

"If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
If you can watch the things you gave your life for, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools...

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch...

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it..."

By this measure, Dr. Yunus has achieved the world.

What an amazing place, what an amazing country. As we in America celebrate our own Independence Day this week, I hope we can take inspiration from the people of Bangladesh and rededicate ourselves to democracy and freedom, knowing that the price may be high, but the sacrifice is well worthwhile.

Love,

Momma

First published in The Huffington Post, July 7, 2014

Kerry Kennedy is President of Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights

Who owns Bangladesh?

Photo: AFP

Women and property rights

AN IMPORTANT reason for Bangladesh’s remarkable progress in recent years has been investment in education of health and education, especially for women. Pick any of the standard measures of development—maternal health, female literacy and life expectancy—and you find that Bangladesh is beating India.

It is young women who stitch garments worth $20 billion in exports, women who own Grameen Bank, an embattled but Nobel-winning micro-lender, and women who have ruled the country as prime ministers since 1991—longer than men have managed, which might make Bangladesh unique in the history of the world’s republics.

Yet look at distribution of land by gender and you might be surprised. There is a very short answer to the question “Who owns Bangladesh?” Men do.

No one knows exactly how unequal the distribution of property is (the government does not disaggregate its statistics by gender). But there is agreement that the share held by women is absolutely tiny. In 1993, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimated that women in Bangladesh owned just 3.5% of the country’s agricultural land. Twenty years on, this share has almost certainly shrunk further, to perhaps as little as 2%.

Bangladesh’s legal system is secular on paper, but the areas of marriage, divorce, alimony and property inheritance are based on what is called personal law, which varies according to an individual’s or family’s religion. Muslim women are allowed to buy or be gifted property or access to khas land (fallow plots owned by the government), but the main route through which they acquire it is inheritance. (Following Hindu custom, Hindu and Buddhist women inherit nothing). The Islamic laws of inheritance are based on the local school of sharia, wherein a daughter is bequeathed only half what her brother inherits. Even a single generation of marriages and deaths does its bit to distribute land away from women. A widow receives one-eighth of her husband’s property if they have children and one-fourth if they do not.

But to concentrate on the unfairness of the inheritance laws would be to ignore the broad majority of women (and men)—approximately two-thirds of Bangladesh’s 160m people are landless. Imagine if seats on a public bus of the standard size were distributed in the same way that Bangladesh’s productive land is. The conductor would have reserved only a single seat for all the women who might board. But he would be holding no tickets at all for two additional busloads of people, left waiting at the kerb.

Often women do not claim any of their inheritance, leaving it in their brothers’ possession. Activists in Bangladesh call it the “good-sister syndrome”: hoping that the brother will look after his sister’s rights. In their experience, more often than not “the good brother does not reciprocate in the way the good sister anticipated”.

In a study titled “Women, land and power in Bangladesh" Jenneke Arens, a Dutch researcher, finds that sons and husbands are often at fault.

“Khadija, rich peasant widow, called me into her house. She was clearly upset: 'I inherited nine bigha (three acres) of land from my mama (uncle) who brought me up, but my sons have registered my land in their names, they took my fingerprint.”

The injustice has not gone unnoticed. There was a move towards a uniform family law in the early 1980s, one that would respect the rights of women and men equally, or at least less unequally. The Awami League (AL) of Sheikh Hasina pushed for it when it was in government in the late 1990s and between 2007 and 2008 an army-backed government drafted legislation to give women equal access, use and control of land.

Indeed in its 2008 election manifesto the AL, which holds office once again, had vowed to rectify “discriminatory laws [that are] against the interest of women”. But that item remained on the “to-do-list” of the same AL government that came to power after winning a landslide victory in late 2008. (It has however made some progress in other areas, such as protecting women from sexual harassment and violence.)

Various plans to change the inheritance laws have been met with violent protest by the Islamic right. It appears that even the AL government cannot afford to enforce the constitution in this matter; it calls for women to be recognised as having equal rights in every sphere of life. (The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is strategically aligned with the conservative right, does not bother in the first place.) “Politicians are afraid to touch religion because they are afraid of losing votes, says Khushi Kabir of Nijera Kori (“We do it ourselves”), an NGO that fights for the rights of landless people. The formation in 2011 of a fundamentalist group called Hefazat-e-Islam (“Protectors of Islam”) was a direct response to a plan for legislation which would ensure that all descendents inherit equal portions of an estate. And so the AL’s three-fourths majority has made little difference.

The prospects for change look gloomy. But, as Ms Kabir says, “with the exception of inheritance laws, we are much better off than Pakistan.” She points to some of Bangladesh’s relatively progressive policies, including some that favour augmenting women’s access to public land, as well as a judiciary that is much more sympathetic to women’s rights than Pakistan’s.

The government has also set in motion a project to digitise all of Bangladesh’s land records (the European Commission has chipped in €10m, or $13.3m). This will be very good, Ms Kabir thinks, because making the public records transparent would make women’s claim official. A small step towards making those greedy brothers behave better, but perhaps an important one.

First published in The Economist, August 20, 2013

Bangladesh Needs Strong Unions, Not Outside Pressure

FAZLE HASAN ABED

BANGLADESH, my country, is again in tears. Last week in Savar, a suburb of Dhaka, the capital, a poorly constructed building that housed garment factories and other businesses collapsed. More than 300 have been confirmed dead, and the final death toll could well exceed 700.

Bangladesh is no stranger to disasters, both natural and man-made. Still, this is one of the saddest chapters since we won our independence in 1971, precisely because the tragedy could easily have been prevented. Structural weaknesses had been found but not fixed. The victims were among the most vulnerable in our society — hardworking people making an honest, but meager, living. Many died manufacturing clothing for Western brands.

I appreciate the unease a Westerner might feel knowing that the clothes on his or her back were stitched together by people working long hours in dangerous conditions. It is natural that people in richer countries are now asking how they can put pressure on Bangladesh and its manufacturers to improve the country’s dismal safety record.

But ceasing the purchase of Bangladeshi-manufactured goods, as some have suggested, would not be the compassionate course of action. Economic opportunities from the garment industry have played an important role in making social change possible in my country, with about three million women now working in the garment sector. I have dedicated my life to alleviating entrenched poverty, and I know that boycotting brands that do business in Bangladesh might only further impoverish those who most need to put food on their tables, since the foreign brands would simply take their manufacturing contracts to other countries.

The rise of manufacturing here has had good effects. In the past, for example, a poor family’s vision for a newborn daughter’s future was often to marry her off as young as possible, since the dowry paid to a husband’s family grows as a daughter gets older. Even after the dowry was outlawed in 1980, the practice continued. A girl would often be married off as young as 13, and would never leave her village, never know a brighter future for herself or her children.

Partly because many women and their daughters now take garment industry jobs — even in factories where workers’ rights are virtually nonexistent — families living in poverty have changed their vision of the future. More have acquired long-term goals, like educating their sons and daughters, saving and taking microloans to start new businesses, and building and maintaining more sanitary living spaces.

Many outsiders think only of calamity when they hear the word Bangladesh — of factory fires, cyclones, floods and poverty. But the true Bangladesh is also the birthplace of microfinance and home to a robust civil society. It has seen rapid gains in living standards: maternal mortality is one-quarter of what it was in 1990; early childhood mortality is one-fifth of what it was in 1980, and we have eliminated the gender gap in primary and secondary school enrollment.

These remarkable gains will mean little if we allow tragedies like the one at Savar to continue. The law must work for everyone, rich and poor, landless laborer and factory owner alike. We must not allow those who benefit from the exploitation of the vulnerable to continue to treat life so cheaply.

What, then, is the solution? The changes must come first from Bangladesh itself. My country will require new political will to hold accountable those who willingly put human lives at such grave risk. It will also require the support of factory owners; civil society organizations, including my own; and the private sector, including Western buyers.

The solutions start with the workers themselves; they must be allowed by their employers to unionize, so they can engage in collective bargaining and hold their employers responsible for basic standards of pay and safety. Their organized power is the only thing that can stand up to the otherwise unaccountable nexus of business owners and politicians, who are often one and the same.

Western buyers, instead of squeezing factory owners on price, should finance better safety standards. The point needs to be made in the marketplace overseas that safety improvements are not so expensive that they can be used as an excuse for raising prices to the consumer. And consumers who are shocked by the working conditions need to realize that a playing field where the price tag is the only standard for a purchase is not a level one when workers’ lives are at stake.

At the same time, the owners themselves cannot be let off the hook, for there is no excuse for criminal negligence. But they cannot be trusted to voluntarily do all that they might. In a country with 100,000 factories in and near the capital, and three million workers in its garment industry, an inspection force numbering 18 people only invites unconscionable lapses on the part of unscrupulous employers. The inspection force must be increased drastically, and it must vigorously enforce safety standards.

The government, finally, must stop neglecting worker safety issues, even as it steps up enforcement. But that will be extremely difficult to accomplish as long as there is an unholy web of employers and politicians colluding to avoid responsibility for criminal negligence; that, in the end, is what trapped thousands of workers in the flimsy factory building that collapsed on them in Savar. Those workers cannot be forgotten until these issues are resolved.

“Made in Bangladesh” should be a mark of pride, not shame. Bangladeshi civil society stands ready to work with the authorities to make this so. In the 1970s, during the early years of my country’s nationhood, Bangladesh was suffused with the energy of the struggle for independence, a yearning for freedom from exploitation. From this energy came microfinance, community health work, and other social innovations that, combined with new economic opportunities in export industries like textiles, have transformed the lives of tens of millions of poor people, particularly women.

Today I grieve with my fellow countrymen, but I also raise my voice to say that this must not continue. As we mourn our losses, let us rekindle that spirit of liberation.

Article first appeared in the New York Times, United States, April 29, 2013

Fazle Hasan Abed, winner of prestigious international awards is the founder and chairman of the antipoverty organization BRAC, formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee.

Progress and Globalization in Bangladesh: The Tazreen Fashions Garment factory fire

ZAFAR SOBHAN

BANGLADESH HAS long been a byword for calamity in the rest of the world, a punch line, a metonymy for doom and disaster. It is only when something catastrophic occurs that the world pays attention to our small delta nation on the Bay of Bengal. A quick search for "Bangladesh" on the New York Times or another publication's website uncovers a litany of chaos and misery: labor unrest, murder, pitched street battles between police and political protesters, flash floods, landslides, death, and destruction. Tragedy in Bangladesh. That’s a story everyone gets.

It’s in this context that we meet last week's tragic fire at Tazreen Fashions, a garment factory just outside the capital Dhaka. At last count, over 120 people perished. They died in the some of the most gruesome ways imaginable, either asphyxiated by smoke, being burned alive, or leaping to their deaths in a vain attempt to save themselves. Of the dead, 53 were charred beyond recognition.

But why do these things happen in Bangladesh? Is this just another story illustrating the sufficiency of misery in that benighted country, or is there more to the story that we are missing?

There is more. And it's a familiar narrative of "progress" and globalization. Today Bangladesh is the second-largest garment manufacturer in the world, lagging behind only China, with garment exports of over $18 billion annually. Check your wardrobe. If you don’t have at least one item made in Bangladesh, I’ll eat the whole damn collection.

And it is this dehumanizing, soul-destroying, exploitative trade that has provided employment to over 3 million impoverished Bangladeshis, the vast majority of them women, and utterly transformed the economic and social landscape of the country. In the 40 years since independence, the poverty rate has plummeted from 80 percent down to less than 30 percent today, GDP growth has averaged around 5-6 percent for over 20 years, and the garment industry has had a lot to do with it. Capitalizing on wages that were and remain among the lowest in the world, globalization brought the garment trade to Bangladesh in the 1980s, kicking off decades of growth.

The garment trade is at the forefront of the kind of industrial revolution that we are experiencing in Bangladesh today, which is why, if from the outside, we look like some Dickensian hell-hole of sweatshops and smokestacks, the image is not altogether inapposite. If the Tazreen Fashions story reminds you of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire that killed over 140 garment workers some 100 years ago in New York, it is because we are just now going through the ugly industrialization that we hope will turn us into a middle-income country within a few decades.

The harsher and even more difficult truth is that, as appalling as they are, these sweatshops are signs of a kind of advancement. In 2012, few Bangladeshi starve to death any more. This wasn’t the case a generation ago when 80 percent of the country subsisted on agriculture, survival being by no means guaranteed.

But burning to death is not an improvement over starving to death, and none of the above should serve to lessen the horror of the deaths at Tazreen Fashions, nor be seen as any kind of explanation let alone justification for the criminal derelictions of responsibility that caused the catastrophe.

There can be no excuse for factories housing thousands of workers without fire escapes. There can be no justification for the chilling reports that, when the fire alarm went off, factory supervisors told the workers that it was a drill, locked the only doors to the outside, and pushed them back up the stairs to the higher floors, where, once the stairwells filled with smoke and fire from the ground floor, they were doomed to perish.

There can be no excuse for the authorities’ failure to ensure that the factory was not up to code, and that few of the 4,000-plus garment factories in the country comply with the fire safety laws.

And there can be no excuse for companies such as Walmart—now busy distancing themselves from the tragedy—that did not bother to ensure the rights and safety of workers making their clothes, and, in fact, trawl the world looking for the cheapest options to make their clothes, turning a blind eye to the corners that are cut to maintain their margins.

The real tragedy is the utterly unnecessary greed that leads to such misery. The garment trade is so profitable that there is enough to go around for everyone. The factory owners can easily afford to ensure that their factories are not death-traps, the Bangladesh government can easily enforce laws for the protection of workers without hurting the industry, and the buyers can easily afford to pay the few pennies more per item that such measures might necessitate, as well as use their bargaining power to follow through and demand compliance, in accordance with US law.

Yes, last week’s fire was just the latest in a long line of similar tragedies that have taken over 400 Bangladeshi lives in the previous decade. And yes, the fire was in some ways a consequence of a global culture where some lives are evidently deemed cheap. Mortality rates in Bangladesh from so-called accidents are among the highest in the world: 85 road deaths a year per 10,000 registered motor vehicles (more than 50 times the US rate), almost 100 deaths due to residential fires in the past three years, at least 140 people drowned this year in ferry capsizings.

But that doesn’t mean that the fire or other similar tragedies are not avoidable. Bangladesh’s economic advancement (and affordable prices for the American consumer) should not come at the cost of ensuring basic worker safety. Anyone trying to tell you so probably has some clothes he wants to sell you.

Article first published in Vice.Com

Zafar Sobhan is a Dhaka-based editor and columnist

Bangladesh: From 'basket case' to model

Lessons from the achievements--yes, really, the achievements--of Bangladesh

Photo Caption: In this Sept. 30, 2012 photo, Sathi Akhtar, a 29-year-old Bangladeshi woman known as Tattahakallayani or Info Lady shows a 15-minute video played in a laptop at one of their usual weekly meetings at Saghata, a remote impoverished farming village in Gaibandha district, 120 miles (192 kilometers) north of capital Dhaka, Bangladesh. Dozens of Info Ladies bike into remote Bangladeshi villages with laptops and Internet connections, helping tens of thousands of people - especially women - get everything from government services to chats with distant loved ones.

In 1976, five years after independence, a book appeared called "Bangladesh: The Test Case of Development."

It was a test, the authors claimed, because the country was such a disaster that if development could be made to work there, it could surely work anywhere. At the time, many people feared that Bangladesh would not survive as an independent state.

One famine, three military coups and four catastrophic floods later, the country that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once dismissed as "a basket case" is still a test. But no longer in the sense of being the bare minimum that others should seek to surpass. Now, Bangladesh has become a standard for others to live up to.

In the past 20 years, Bangladesh has made extraordinary improvements in almost every indicator of human welfare. The average Bangladeshi can now expect to live four years longer than the average Indian, though Indians are twice as rich. Girls' education has soared, and the country has hugely reduced the numbers of early deaths of infants, children and mothers.

Some of these changes are among the fastest social improvements ever seen. Remarkably, the country has achieved all this even though economic growth, until recently, has been sluggish and income has risen only modestly.

Bangladesh might seem like a special case. Because of its poverty, it has long been a recipient of vast amounts of aid. With around 150 million people crammed into a silted delta frequently swept by cyclones and devastating floods, it is the most densely populated country on Earth outside city-states. Hardly any part is isolated by distance, tradition or ethnicity, making it easier for antipoverty programs to reach everyone. Unusually, it has a culture that is distinct from its religion: although most Bangladeshis are Muslims, their culture and language are shared with the non-Muslim Indian state of West Bengal. Religious opposition to social change has been mild. Not many nationalities have so unusual a collection of traits.

The female factor

That said, the most important of the country's achievements can serve as a model for others. Bangladesh shows what happens if you take women seriously as agents of development. When the country became independent, population-control policies were all the rage (this was the period of China's one-child policy and India's forced sterilizations). Happily lacking the ability to impose such savage restrictions, the government embarked instead upon a program of voluntary family planning. It was stunningly successful. It not only halved the rate of fertility within a generation, but also increased women's influence within their own households. For the first time, wives controlled the size of families.

Later, the textile industry took off -- and four-fifths of its workers are female. Bangladesh was also the home of microcredit, tiny loans for the poorest. By design, these go to women. Thus, over the past two decades women have earned greater influence in the home and more financial autonomy.

And, as experience from around the world shows, women spend their money differently from men: typically, on their children's food, health and education. Child welfare has been underpinned by a quiet revolution in the role of women.

That is not all there was to it. Thanks to remittances from abroad and to the Green Revolution, Bangladesh has done better than most at reducing persistent rural poverty. It has maintained a broad consensus in favor of basic social spending despite military coups and a toxic politics dominated by the bitter infighting of the "battling begums" (the widow and daughter of former presidents, who lead the two main parties).

Bangladesh also has benefited by letting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) get on with what the state itself has been too weak or corrupt to do: experiment with different programs and scale up those that work. Much of its success is attributable to local NGOs like Grameen and BRAC.

Bangladesh has shown that countries can transform the lives of the poorest without having to wait for economic growth. But it does not show that growth is irrelevant. The country surely would have done better still if its economy had expanded faster.

As people's education and expectations rise further, it will be all the more important to provide new jobs and opportunities for advancement.

This article was first published in THE ECONOMIST, November 5, 2012

The poor aren’t poor by choice

BISMAH KASURI

THIS IS the belief held by many in our society today about the poor. But what possible reason would allude to the fact that 70 million Pakistanis actually want to live in such destitute conditions? Those who believe that the state of poverty is an inescapable trap, tirelessly attempt to help others break free from this vicious cycle. These people run NGOs, fundraise, and engage in various philanthropic activities to alleviate poverty in any capacity that they are able to. But why do they simply donate money to the poor instead of diverting those funds towards the setup of a self-sustaining project that facilitates greater income-earning abilities in the long-run? The poor do not want to be poor. But until recently, they had no choice but to be poor.

Thanks to Nobel Laureate, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, millions of poor people all over the world are now financially stable, and are rising over and above the poverty line every day. Dr Yunus founded the Grameen Bank on the basis that it would only grant loans to the poor, who, to this day, remain unrepresented in most large private financial institutions. The founder of microfinance has been able to change the face of Bangladesh by giving loans of small amounts to the poor. With the help of structured weekly meetings in over 400 Bangladeshi villages to collect loan repayment instalments, the Grameen Bank has an astounding loan repayment rate of 98 percent. One would think of comparing this figure to the big banks on Wall Street that came crashing down during the economic meltdown but there really is no comparison.

According to a recent opinion piece by Jamil Nasir in The News, poverty alleviation policies need to be formed based on careful research and analysis of the living conditions of the poor (August 11, 2012). He draws extensively from the seminal research undertaken by professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of MIT. They assert that the analysis of expenditure patterns, basic necessities, and economic environment of the poor, are necessary for effective policy-making. If there is one thing I have learned during my time at the Grameen Bank, it is that they know their clients. They know the lives of the people whom they serve, and they understand the limitations of the social structure in which they operate. This is why the Grameen model of microcredit is not only based on the provision of finances, but also on the more human concepts of trust, motivation, and community. These emotional sentiments stir from “The Sixteen Decisions” of Grameen, a concept that encourages and facilitates an overall higher standard of living to all of its borrowers.

When a woman is granted a Grameen Bank loan, she must promise to abide by the Sixteen Decisions to the best of her ability. These are a set of agreements laid out by Dr Yunus to help improve the overall standard of living, which include promises to use sanitary toilets, drinking clean water, and fully educating their children. The Sixteen Decisions serve as a motivating tool for Grameen borrowers all over Bangladesh, not only to better their financial conditions, but to improve all aspects of their living standards. As I witnessed in the villages of Bangladesh firsthand, the implementation of the Sixteen Decisions has had an astounding impact on the entire country. Not a single woman that I met in the village of Sherpur had more than four children, and 97 percent of the women were educating all of their children, including daughters. Each one of them owned homes made of solid tin-shed, equipped with fully-functioning latrines. Most importantly, these women owned clothing and press factories in which they had employed their own husbands.

Take a moment to note the vital difference in the social structures between Pakistan and Bangladesh, a country 24 years newer than our own. Dr Yunus has not only facilitated banking to the poor, but has also changed the way they live on a daily basis. His carefully crafted model of microcredit truly has transformed the lives of the poor, not only in Bangladesh, but all over the world. The “poor” Bangladeshi women, whom I have lived with over the last few months, are living proof that anything is possible with just a little bit of trust, organization, and guidance along the way. Amazing what empowering women can do for a country.

In order to reduce poverty, a much better understanding of the Grameen model is required. We should understand the lives of the 70 million Pakistanis currently living below the poverty line, and need to truly ascertain the basic human needs they are deprived of. We should understand their spending patterns, their job structures, and the culture of the communities in which they live. Simply distributing microloans every month will not bring anyone out of poverty, because poverty is not only determined by monetary wealth but also by a combination of sanitary living conditions, access to education and healthcare, and adequate nutrition.

A concept similar to the Sixteen Decisions is necessary to bring about any overall change, as it accounts for all of these facets of living. Perhaps, we as Pakistanis should spend more time delving into, and truly understanding, the needs of our people. Once we are able to tailor a poverty alleviation policy directly to their needs, the results will be nothing short of incredible.

First published in the Pakistan Today, September 2, 2012

Bismah Kasuri is a graduate in anthropology and economics from the University of Virginia, USA, she is also Social Business Intern at Yunus Centre