No Peace in the Hills Yet

Hana Shams Ahmed

It was the previous Awami League government in 1997 that signed the historic CHT Accord in 1997, promising to end 25 years of guerrilla war in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Unfortunately the government-encouraged settlement of poor Bangalis into the area, started in the 1980s, has never stopped therefore destabilising the situation 11 years after the signing. Most of the key provisions of the accord remained unimplemented in the last decade. The newly elected AL government has clearly mentioned in its election manifesto that they will take steps to fully implement the Peace Accord.

Hana Shams Ahmed

[STAR magazine, THE DAILY STAR, February 27, 2009]
Chittagong’s face-lifted Shah Amanat International Airport boasts ceramic artwork of various tourism selling points of Bangladesh. One of them shows a group of quaint-looking Pahari girls doing a traditional dance. Next to it is another Pahari girl in a traditional pinon picking leaves from a hill in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The depiction of Pahari girls as part of our cultural heritage has always been used to attract national and international tourists. Unfortunately how the common Pahari girls are living their lives seems to be hardly of concern. The Chittagong Hill Tracts is the only place in the entire country (except for the Cantonment areas) where the army still remains with nearly six brigades of approximately 35,000 army personnel.

One big hurdle down

Zahedul I Khan

Hana Shams Ahmed

[THE DAILY STAR, May 19, 2009]

JUST like it took the rape of three women students at Jahangirnagar University (JU) to recognise what an extreme form sexual harassment had taken at the universities it took the suicide of Art College student Simi Banu to bring to mass consciousness the extreme forms “eve teasing” has now taken in this country. And until the defiant JU students took to the streets in 1998, the mere concept of “sexual harassment” in educational institutions was only spoken about in hushed tones among girl students at the university halls.

But now it’s finally here — institutional recognition of sexual harassment. 11 years after the JU case, and many hundreds of silenced and vocal cases in between, the High Court has directed the government to make a sexual harassment law based on the guidelines drawn up by lawyers and human rights activists.

Youth Boom and Possible Futures

Photo: Naeem Mohaiemen

Hana Shams Ahmed

[Published in 'Our Common Future: South Asia' by Liberal Youth South Asia, a network of liberal youth and youth organisations. November 2008]

In 2008, the results of Bangladesh’s Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams had an all-time record pass percentage – 72 per cent – and the highest number of GPA-5 recipients ever. For a few years now, all these records are getting broken at every level of higher education. Beyond what it may mean for higher education, it keeps bringing to the media images of hundreds of thousands of young boys and girls in the streets – waving, clapping, celebrating – the shape of our exploding youth boom.