Originally published on Global Voices

Workers at a garment factory in Gazipur, Bangladesh. Image via Flickr by Solidarity Center. CC BY 2.0.

In April 2026, Bangladesh’s Parliament amended the country’s labour law, extending maternity benefits for eligible workers from 112 to 120 days, or approximately four months. Yet for many women in the country’s garment factories, the harder question begins when that leave ends: Who cares for their babies while they return to shifts that may last 10 to 14 hours?

The pressure is not limited to garment workers. Across Bangladesh, working mothers often depend on relatives or informal care networks, while affordable, quality childcare remains limited. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has noted that Bangladesh’s traditional family-dependent care system is under pressure as patterns of work and migration change. For low-income workers with long or unpredictable hours, that gap can be especially difficult.

International brands and factories increasingly point to maternity policies, breastfeeding rooms and on-site daycare facilities as signs of progress. The question is whether those facilities are adequately staffed, accessible during long shifts and genuinely usable.

Morsheda, 33, originally from Narsingdi, has worked in the garment industry for 15 years and currently works at a factory in Gazipur. She was interviewed in person by Global Voices in Gazipur in July 2026 for this article. After four months of maternity leave, she returned to work while her five-month-old baby remained with the child’s paternal grandmother.

Before reaching the production floor, she prepares meals, cleans the house and gets her older child ready for school.

“Buyers come and talk about different policies and workers’ rights. But our duty doesn’t get any shorter. We still work at least 10 hours a day, and with overtime it becomes 13 or 14 hours,” Morsheda said. “Sometimes I worked from eight in the morning until ten at night. My body was exhausted, my breast milk leaked, but I had to clean myself and continue working.”

The factory had a breastfeeding room, but access was another matter.

“The breastfeeding room was always there. But there was no one to bring my baby to me.”

When her older child was an infant, Morsheda’s mother briefly stayed with her and brought the baby to the factory. Later, she relied on a paid caregiver who would not make repeated journeys for breastfeeding. Her five-month-old baby now stays with the child’s paternal grandmother, who brings the infant to the factory twice a day.

“I have to finish the hourly production target before I go; otherwise, the supervisor gets angry.” Morsheda said.

Her experience reflects a wider childcare problem documented in urban Bangladesh, where formal options can be limited or unaffordable and families piece together care around work. For garment workers, that can mean moving children between grandmothers, paid caregivers and older children.

Mina, 38, originally from Rangpur, has worked in the garment industry for around 20 years and currently works in Savar. Global Voices interviewed her by phone call in July 2026. When her child, now five, was an infant, she received 56 days of maternity leave.

“When my child was younger, I brought my mother from the village. She looked after my baby for around four or five months. Later, she went back to the village. Then I kept my child with another person by paying money. When I could no longer manage the cost, I kept my child at the factory daycare. But my child became sick there, and I had to take the baby to the hospital. After that, I stopped keeping my child at the daycare.”

With no reliable option left, responsibility eventually passed to her elder son.

“I knew it was affecting my elder son’s studies, but I had no other option.” Mina said.

Both women described factories where women make up more than half of the workforce but daycare space is limited. At Morsheda’s factory, where around 3,000 people work and nearly 2,000 are women, the daycare accommodates only about 12 or 13 children and has two caregivers. Both women also raised concerns about hygiene and the quality of care.

A national industry tied to global fashion

Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry generates more than USD 36 billion in exports and employs approximately 4.5 million workers, more than 57 percent of them women. In 2024, around 40 percent of garment exports went to the European Union and another 18 percent to the United States.

Garment employment has expanded women’s access to paid work, but women still shoulder most unpaid care work at home. Bangladeshi women spend more than seven times as much time on unpaid care and domestic work as men, according to a national Time Use Survey cited by the ILO. An ILO-supported study found that 54 percent of working parents viewed inadequate childcare as a major barrier to women entering or remaining in employment, while 18 percent said they had left a job because of childcare responsibilities.

Bangladesh’s labour law requires establishments with 40 or more women workers to maintain suitable rooms for their children under six, with trained or experienced female caregivers and access for mothers. But that requirement does not answer the practical questions raised by Morsheda and Mina about capacity, staffing and whether mothers can use the facilities during production hours.

Beyond Bangladesh

The ILO estimates that the global garment industry employs around 94 million workers, nearly 60 percent of them women.

The legal protections differ. Bangladesh now provides 120 days (4 months) of maternity benefits for eligible workers and requires childcare rooms in establishments with 40 or more women. Vietnam provides six months of maternity leave; women nursing a child under 12 months are entitled to 60 minutes of paid breaks each working day, and employers are required to assist with daycare or kindergarten facilities or cover part of childcare costs. Cambodia provides 90 days of maternity leave, with half wages and benefits for workers with at least one year’s seniority. During a child’s first year, mothers are entitled to one hour of paid breastfeeding time each workday, while employers with 100 or more women must operate a nursing room and a daycare centre, or in some circumstances cover childcare costs.

Yet legal provision does not remove the problem of access. In Vietnam, ILO research found that women made up 74.8 percent of the textile and garment workforce, while 40 percent of workers in the sector worked more than 49 hours a week in 2023.

VnExpress reported that public nurseries around industrial zones were limited, private care could be expensive and many preschools closed before factory overtime ended.

In Cambodia, World Bank reporting documented similar dependence on family care. Garment worker Srun Saren left two children with her 75-year-old grandmother and expected to leave her job after a third child because adequate care was unavailable.

Another worker, Kang Somaly, left garment work after failing to find care for her four-month-old baby and seven-year-old child.

Across Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia, women sustain garment production while families absorb much of the childcare that makes their employment possible.

From responsible sourcing to meaningful support

The idea that support should extend beyond maternity leave is reflected in existing labour programmes. The ILO and UNICEF’s Mothers@Work initiative for Bangladesh’s garment sector identifies seven minimum standards, including paid maternity leave, breastfeeding and childcare facilities, flexible working arrangements, health protection, medical benefits, employment protection and non-discrimination. A 2022 ILO assessment found improvements in factory maternity and breastfeeding policies, while also highlighting women leaving and re-entering employment because of childcare responsibilities.

The findings shift attention from the existence of childcare facilities to how they function in practice, including whether workers can use them during long shifts and while meeting production targets.

Neither Morsheda nor Mina identified the international brands sourcing from their factories, and their experiences cannot be attributed to any particular company. Their accounts illustrate how childcare responsibilities may remain outside formal factory systems, relying instead on grandmothers, paid caregivers and, in some cases, older children.

Bangladesh’s extension of maternity benefits to 120 days has expanded formal maternity protection for eligible workers. However, the experiences of Morsheda and Mina, together with findings from the ILO’s Mothers@Work qualitative assessment, point to continuing childcare challenges after workers return from maternity leave.

Originally published on Global Voices

Anti-CAA Banner demonstrated at Cultural Protest organised by Artistes of Assam. 2019. Image via Wikipedia by Ankur Jyoti Dewri. CC BY-SA 4.0.

This post is part of Global Voices’ July 2026 Spotlight series, “Statelessness.” This series offers insight into the issue of statelessness and how it hinders people’s freedom of movement, educational opportunities, political access, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

In March 2024, the Assam government shifted its policy to encourage applications under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), helping eligible people apply instead of facing proceedings before Foreigners Tribunals. Since then, only six people have received citizenship under the law, while tens of thousands of cases remain pending before the Foreigners Tribunals.

A large pool of exclusion

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) of 2019 was promoted by the leaders of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a pathway to Indian citizenship for eligible Bengali Hindus caught in Assam’s citizenship verification process.

In March 2024, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma mentioned that around 500,000 Bengali Hindus were among the 1.9 million people excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Yet, more than a year after the Assam government introduced a new approach to help eligible people obtain citizenship under the law, official figures showed that only six people had received citizenship.

A long legal battle

One of those six people was Dipali Das. In March 2026, Dipali Das became one of the first people in Assam to receive Indian citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). Seven years earlier, a Foreigners Tribunal in the northeastern Indian state had declared her a foreigner, sending her to a detention center in Silchar, where she spent nearly two years while she and her family fought to prove that she was an Indian citizen.

For Das, receiving her citizenship certificate ended a years-long legal battle. Her case also reflected a broader shift in Assam’s approach to disputed citizenship claims. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), which finally came into force in 2024, provided a fast-track pathway to Indian citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who entered India on or before December 31, 2014. Rather than relying solely on Foreigners Tribunals, Assam had begun using the CAA as an alternative route for some eligible people.

Foreigners Tribunals were established in Assam under the Foreigners Tribunals Order (1964) to determine whether people suspected of being foreigners are Indian citizens. Cases are referred by the police or district authorities, while the Election Commission can also flag “D” (Doubtful) voters whose citizenship is then verified by a tribunal.

The impact of the shift to CAA

That policy shift became clearer in July 2025. According to Scroll news, which reviewed the minutes of a July 2025 meeting held by Assam’s Home and Political Department, district commissioners and senior police officials were instructed not to continue pursuing certain Foreigners Tribunal cases involving people eligible under the CAA. Instead, they were directed to identify eligible individuals, assist them in applying for citizenship under the law, and submit periodic progress reports.

The directive marked a departure from Assam’s long-standing reliance on Foreigners Tribunals. Many people eligible under the CAA had already become entangled in the state’s citizenship verification process after being excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which required residents to prove that they or their ancestors lived in Assam before March 25, 1971, the cut-off date established by the Assam Accord.

Many of the 1.9 million people who were excluded from the final list challenged their exclusion before Foreigners Tribunals, and cases are ongoing. Instead of continuing tribunal proceedings in selected CAA-eligible cases, the government sought to move eligible applicants toward the new citizenship process.

This directive has also created a dual-track system where non-Muslims are shielded from Foreigners Tribunal scrutiny while Muslims continue to face proceedings with the risk of detention and deportation. Having won the May 2026 Assam elections with a solo majority partly by consolidating Hindu votes through this polarizing narrative, the BJP now has no political incentive to reverse course.

In July 2026, the first official figures released after the initiative showed that only 70 people had applied under the CAA and just six had received citizenship. During the same Assam Legislative Assembly session in July 2026, the government disclosed that 73,759 cases remained pending before Foreigners Tribunals, while 172,673 people had been declared foreigners since the tribunals were established.

The CAA vs Foreigners Tribunals

Although Parliament passed  The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in 2019, it only came into operation after the Union government notified its Rules in March 2024. In Assam, implementation proved particularly complex because many people who could benefit from the law were already contesting their citizenship before Foreigners Tribunals.

The low number of applications was not entirely unexpected. Reporting by Maktoob Media and The Quint found that many eligible Bengali Hindu families feared applying under the CAA could undermine the citizenship claims they were already pursuing before Foreigners Tribunals or through the NRC.

Lawyers and rights groups echoed those concerns, arguing that the application process could require applicants to identify themselves as migrants from Bangladesh, potentially weakening the legal position they were already defending.

Among them was Montu Das, a resident of Cachar district, whose wife Nisharani Das had been excluded from the NRC, leaving her unable to vote or access some public services. Speaking to Maktoob Media, Das said he had no intention of applying under the CAA because he feared applying under the CAA with new documents would damage his family’s existing citizenship claim. “Hum fas jayega”  (We will be trapped), he said. “I will never apply, come what may.”

Anjali Roy, who had successfully challenged her “doubtful voter” designation years earlier, voiced similar concerns to The Quint. “My father and grandfather were born in India… So why should I declare myself as a migrant?” she said.

Roy’s concerns were shared by organizations such as the Citizens’ Rights Preservation Committee (CRPC), which has represented families involved in citizenship-related cases across Assam. Its president, Sadhan Purkayastha, told Maktoob Media that many eligible Bengali Hindus were already trying to establish that they were Indian citizens before Foreigners Tribunals. Applying under the CAA, he argued, could require them to identify themselves as migrants from Bangladesh, potentially weakening the position they were already defending before the tribunals.

Legal scholars have also questioned whether the tribunals provide adequate safeguards in cases carrying the risk of statelessness. Dr. Mohsin Alam Bhat, Assistant Professor of Law at Queen Mary University of London, mentioned in a July 2025 report that citizenship adjudication carries “profound consequences, including the risk of statelessness,” and therefore requires bodies that are “legally constituted, independent, impartial, and composed of competent legal officers.” His report concludes that Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals fall short of those standards.

Unanswered questions

The government has recently released CAA application and citizenship figures, but has not disclosed how many people were identified under the initiative, how many pending Foreigners Tribunal cases were reviewed, or whether district officials submitted the required progress reports. Those unanswered questions remain significant because Foreigners Tribunals continue to decide citizenship disputes in Assam.

On July 13, 2026, the Supreme Court of India set aside Foreigners Tribunal and Gauhati High Court decisions declaring 27 people as foreigners after finding procedural deficiencies and ordered fresh hearings. Although the judgment did not concern the CAA, it showed that the tribunal system continues to determine the legal status of thousands of people in Assam.

Against that backdrop, the government’s own figures reveal only part of the picture. Six people have received citizenship under the CAA, while tens of thousands of tribunal cases remain pending. They do not show whether the initiative identified and helped eligible people move out of prolonged tribunal proceedings and obtain citizenship under the CAA. So it is impossible to assess whether the July 2025 initiative expanded access to citizenship or merely altered the administrative process. For thousands of people whose legal status remains unresolved, that distinction carries profound consequences.

Originally published on Global Voices

Mohammed Asem. Photo courtesy of the author, used with permission.

This essay was written by Mohammed Asem, courtesy of The Global Movement Against Statelessness (GMAS), a content partner of Global Voices. This post is part of Global Voices’ July 2026 Spotlight series, “Statelessness.” This series offers insight into the issue of statelessness and how it hinders people’s freedom of movement, educational opportunities, political access, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

Before fleeing my homeland, I had a place to call home and dreams to build a future in Arakan, Myanmar, but we frequently encountered discrimination: We could not move freely, access public education, attend university, or participate in elections.

Before the 1982 nationality law, the Rohingya in Myanmar held citizenship rights, including recognition as Myanmar nationals. After the 1982 Law, the Rohingya lost their citizenship entirely, which affected their ability to live with dignity and safety. As a result, a large number of Rohingya  — approximately 1.2 million people according to UNHCR estimates — were forced to become refugees in their neighboring country, Bangladesh. I was one of them.

As I fled with my family in 2017, at the age of 10, we witnessed people being shot as they were trying to cross the Naf River, the river marking the border between southeastern Bangladesh and northwestern Myanmar. I saw many Rohingya children floating on the river after losing their lives to the Myanmar junta’s gunfire. We were also fired upon as we were trying to reach the Bay of Bengal by crossing the river near our village in Myanmar, but fortunately for us, we made it across.

Demonstrators call for greater rights for refugees in Bangladesh. Image courtesy of Mohammed Asem, used with permission.

The Rohingya have been persecuted in Myanmar since at least the 1970s, with events coming to a head from August 2016 to January 2017, when the military began a violent crackdown that led to large-scale massacres and crimes against humanity. The military was accused of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and committing genocide by different United Nations agencies, officials of the International Criminal Court, various governments, and several human rights groups.

Beyond the extrajudicial killings, gang rapes, executions, arson, infanticides, relentless persecution, and denial of rights, the military’s actions displaced vast numbers of people, most of whom fled across the border to Bangladesh.

After facing all the hardships of the crossing, we reached the border — Bangladesh’s Shah Porir Dwip island — but the Border Guard of Bangladesh would not allow us to enter the country,  and we spent a night on the island, struggling to live without any necessities. After spending that one night there, my family and I were allowed to enter Bangladesh.

But the story does not end there. After the struggle to escape to safety came the struggle of being stateless once we reached the world’s largest settlement and camp in Kutupalong, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

When we arrived in Kutupalong, the Rohingya Camp, we had access to very few supplies — clothes, food, medicine, and sanitary supplies were limited — and we lived in temporary shelters, which were very rough. As we fled Myanmar, we were exposed to different diseases and injuries, and we received no proper treatment. One of my brothers almost died from the lack of proper treatment. After a few days of seeking help, I was able to find basic treatment for my brother, and he gradually got better.

A child in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh. Photo by Mohammed Asem, used with permission.

Living in a refugee camp is safer than what we fled from, but it is not a normal life. In a normal life, I would be thinking about what to study, how to build my career, and succeed. But in the camp, I had no opportunities to study, and at 11 years old, I was nearly hopeless about continuing my academic journey. In 2019, I was admitted to an NGO-based learning center for informal education, but it did not match the regular school curriculum and did not prepare me to try for higher education.

After six months at the camp, I joined a Rohingya community school taught by teachers in the camp, where I studied the Myanmar curriculum just as I would have at schools in Myanmar. I hoped to integrate into mainstream schooling once I left the camp.

In 2023, I got an opportunity to study in Turkey, but I needed a passport, which I didn’t have access to, since Rohingya people don’t qualify for citizenship in either Myanmar or Bangladesh. I had gotten a certificate issued by the Myanmar Ministry of Education (MMOE) for graduating from high school; however, the scholarship evaluation committee did not recognize it because of my stateless status. I worked so hard for that opportunity, but I could not take it.

My recognition as a stateless and forcibly displaced person has become a long-term barrier to obtaining any formal opportunities for education or work. Over time, this made me an active advocate, youth activist, and human rights defender.

In July 2025, I founded an organization, “Arakani Youth Innovation,” to empower Rohingya young people, preserve our culture, and inspire innovation. We bring young women and men into peaceful dialogue where we can address the challenges the Rohingya are facing in the camps and find solutions through collective and cooperative decisions.

A meeting of the Arakani Youth Innovation group. Image courtesy of Mohammed Asem, used with permission.

Many young Rohingya like myself dream of becoming future leaders, driving forces in their communities, but we always run up against the barrier of being designated “stateless.”

The situation in Myanmar remains uncertain even after the genocide of the Rohingya.

With the 2021 military coup, the junta took control of Myanmar just a few hours after parliament and detained the civilian leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint. And since the military shifted power to junta coup leader Ming Aung Hlaing in 2021, the situation in Myanmar has worsened, and civil conflict has increased; the people of Myanmar have started fighting against the military.

In 2024, the armed Buddhist rebel group the Arakan Army took control of most of Rakhine State (Arakan). This group has also carried out large-scale brutalities and oppression against the Rohingya.

The hope for the Rohingya to return to their homeland with their rights has become even fainter.

Originally published on Global Voices

A student in a learning center in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo by Mohammed Zubair. Used with permission.

This essay was written by Mohammed Zubair and Abul Osman, courtesy of The Global Movement Against Statelessness (GMAS), a content partner of Global Voices. This post is part of Global Voices’ July 2026 Spotlight series, “Statelessness.” This series offers insight into the issue of statelessness and how it hinders people’s freedom of movement, educational opportunities, political access, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

Every morning in dozens of Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, thousands of young Rohingya people wake up with the same hopes that students everywhere carry. They dream of becoming doctors, teachers, engineers, journalists, and leaders who can serve their communities. They pick up worn-out notebooks, walk to overcrowded learning centers with very limited resources, or teach themselves because there is nowhere else for them to continue their education.

Rohingya refugees are not allowed to pursue formal education in Bangladesh because of government policies that restrict their access to the national education system. As refugees, they are not permitted to enroll in Bangladeshi public schools or universities, and these restrictions are largely linked to their refugee status and identity. Instead, most Rohingya children and youth are limited to learning centers that provide only basic education. As a result, thousands of Rohingya students are denied the opportunity to continue their studies, develop their skills, and build a better future.

The world often describes these children as the “lost generation.”

That phrase reflects the tragedy of their displacement, but it does not reflect who they are.

After listening to the voices of Rohingya youth, one thing becomes clear: They are not lost. They have not abandoned their dreams, nor have they stopped believing in the power of education. What they have lost is something very different — the opportunity to learn freely, continue their studies, and build the future they imagined before violence forced them to flee their homeland.

Dreams that refuse to fade

Every day Mohammed Furkan, a poet and youth activist, sees young people studying  Burmese, English, mathematics, science, history, and geography late into the night, sharing books with friends, teaching younger children, and refusing to let education disappear from their lives. Most students buy their own books, while some receive donated books from other community members. He believes the world often focuses on what refugees have lost while overlooking what they continue to protect.

He says, “We have not lost our dreams or our potential. What we have lost are opportunities that every young person deserves.”

Furkan’s words capture a simple but powerful truth: No young person’s future should be determined by the place where they were forced to seek safety.

This reality is also reflected in the findings of UNICEF and UNHCR. Rohingya refugee children and young people are eager to learn and remain committed to their education. Their education is interrupted not because they lack determination, but because educational opportunities in the refugee camps in Bangladesh are limited.

Older students studying in a classroom in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo by Mohammed Zubair. Used with permission.

Although some learning centers provide access to basic education and some students can study under the Myanmar Curriculum Pilot, many children still cannot access continuous, quality education. Learning centers often have very limited capacity, resulting in overcrowded classrooms. There are also shortages of qualified or experienced teachers, textbooks, and other learning materials. Most importantly, opportunities to continue beyond secondary education (Grade 10) are extremely limited, leaving many students without a clear pathway to higher secondary education or university. As a result, many Rohingya children and young people are unable to continue their education despite their strong motivation and commitment to learning.

The pain of reaching a closed door

One Rohingya youth, Aung Naing Soe, explained that education for Rohingya refugees is primarily funded by UNICEF and implemented through partners such as CODEC, BRAC, JCF, Coast Foundation, and other NGOs. However, these programs remain insufficient to meet educational needs. As a result, most Rohingya students rely on community-led schools run by experienced Rohingya teachers in the camps.

For many Rohingya families, community-led schools are far more than classrooms — they are a source of hope for their children’s future. According to Ali Jinnah Hussin, a human rights activist and researcher, although around 6,400 informal learning centers operate in the refugee camps and are supported by INGOs, many Rohingya children prefer community-led schools because they believe that qualified teachers and the Myanmar curriculum better prepare them for the future.

Many parents choose community-led schools because they trust the quality of education provided there. These schools are run by experienced Rohingya teachers, many of whom taught in Myanmar before being displaced, and they continue to teach by following the Myanmar curriculum. In contrast, many parents feel that INGO-based learning centers do not provide the same quality of teaching or the same depth of knowledge, making community-led schools a better choice for their children’s education.

Despite the dedication of these teachers and the hard work of their students, much of this education remains invisible outside the refugee camps. Without internationally recognized certificates or accredited qualifications, years of study and achievement carry little value beyond the camp boundaries, leaving many talented Rohingya students without opportunities to continue their education.

However, although they can complete secondary education in the Bangladesh refugee camps, Rohingya people can’t access higher education because no Bangladesh university can admit them due to their refugee status.

For families already struggling to survive, higher education becomes a dream that feels impossible to reach. Young people who once imagined wearing graduation gowns instead begin searching for daily work simply to help their families survive.

The dream does not disappear.

The opportunity does.

According to UNHCR, only a small proportion of refugee youth worldwide are able to access higher education, despite having the ability, determination, and desire to continue learning. They continue to ask a simple question: Why are we denied the opportunity to continue our education when education is a fundamental human right? Are we (Rohingya) not human beings, deserving of the same chance to learn like students from other countries, grow, and build our future as every other young person in the world? These are not questions of privilege — they are questions of equality, dignity, justice, and human rights.

Education is also about hope

Ro Hefzu, a poet, explains what it felt like to have his learning abruptly cut off due to his refugee status. “Before we can even demonstrate our skills, experience, or potential, we are often stopped.”

But when activist Ro Hamid Ullah speaks about education, he rarely begins with classrooms or textbooks. He begins with hope.

For young people living in displacement, education is more than learning lessons. It gives them a reason to believe that tomorrow can be better than today. When that hope is interrupted, the emotional impact runs deep.

Noor Kolima lost her parents at a very early age. She lives in the world’s largest refugee camp settlement in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, with her disabled brother, whose severe mental illness makes him nearly unable to take care of himself. Noor’s life is a daily struggle to meet her basic needs for both education and livelihood. All she has left of her family is a powerful and symbolic scarf of her mother that she carries as a memory. It whispers that one day, she can prove she belongs somewhere in the world.

Noor was just 14 when she lost her mother to severe illness. Despite the grief and loss of her mother’s death, she continues to dream of becoming a doctor. She wants to save the lives of other women, so that she doesn’t have to see others dying, like her mother, because they have no access to medical services. She believes, “If I can be an educated girl today, I will be able to educate other girls tomorrow.”

Many Rohingya students live with uncertainty, frustration, and disappointment. Some are forced to leave school to support their families financially. Others continue studying without knowing whether their efforts will ever open the doors they dream of.

Still, they keep learning.

Their resilience is extraordinary.

Research by Save the Children shows that long-term interruptions to education can affect mental well-being, confidence, and future opportunities. Behind every interrupted educational journey is a young person fighting to hold onto hope.

What Rohingya youth are really asking for

Rohingya youth are not asking the world to feel sorry for them. They are asking for the same opportunities that students in every country deserve. They want quality education, recognized certificates, vocational training, scholarships, access to universities, and a fair chance to build meaningful lives through knowledge and hard work. Education is not charity. It is a fundamental human right.

Investing in refugee education is not simply helping individual students. It is investing in future teachers, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, journalists, and community leaders who can one day help rebuild their communities.

The voices of Rohingya youth in this article send one clear message: they have not given up on education, and the world should not give up on them.

Originally published on Global Voices

A Rohingya refugee woman stands outside the Women's Center in Balukhali camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Image via Flickr by UN Women. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

This post is part of Global Voices’ July 2026 Spotlight series, “Statelessness.” This series offers insight into the issue of statelessness and how it hinders people’s freedom of movement, educational opportunities, political access, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

Mahmudah, a 16-year-old Rohingya girl from Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh, hugged her parents goodbye in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar and climbed into a trafficker’s vehicle packed with other children. Her family was destitute and terrified of Myanmar’s military and had accepted payment of roughly 18,000 Malaysian Ringgit (USD 4,395) from a Rohingya laborer already living in Malaysia in exchange for marrying their daughter once she arrived.

They called it a “bridal journey.” She left in the dark before dawn, her wedding photos still tucked into a plastic folder her mother kissed before handing it to the broker. The man promised that a boat across the Bay of Bengal would take her to Malaysia, where her husband — already working irregular jobs near Kuala Lumpur — was waiting in a rented room with a borrowed gold ring and plans for a new life.

Somewhere between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, crammed on an overloaded fishing vessel, she disappeared when the boat capsized.

No official record bears her name; her family only has the memory of a farewell and the rumor that, like hundreds of others, she was swallowed by the water on a “marriage voyage” that became a trafficking route.

Another girl, Fatema, born in the Rohingya camps in 2010, had a different hope. At 15, she was already married to a cousin who beat her for talking to neighbors and for refusing to hand over the ration card. With school cut, no work allowed, and community gossip turning against girls who “stayed unmarried too long,” she saw no way out.

A local fixer told her that Thailand and Indonesia could offer “work and safety”, that she could escape her husband and send money home.

Instead, she was moved from one coastal safe house to another, her documents taken, her phone confiscated, and, once ashore, she was sold into a sex network in southern Thailand.

Her story, like many others, ends not with protection but with a new layer of abuse in a foreign country.

These are not isolated tragedies. They are emblematic of a pattern in which stateless Rohingya girls in Bangladesh’s refugee camps are pushed from early marriage and gender-based violence into maritime journeys that are framed as family reunification or escape—but in reality, amount to human trafficking.

Stateless daughters in a fenced-in world

In the camps of Cox’s Bazar, Rohingya girls stand at the intersection of every kind of vulnerability. More than 1.2 million stateless refugees remain fenced into some thirty-three overcrowded settlements, most of them women and children, almost none allowed to take formal work or move freely beyond the perimeter. Daily life is structured by checkpoints and ration cards rather than by school timetables or pay slips.

For adolescent girls, this means dependence on male relatives and humanitarian agencies for food, shelter, and safety — with very little control over their own futures.

As donor governments cut funding, the World Food Programme has repeatedly warned that monthly food vouchers — already reduced once in 2023 — would be slashed again, leaving families to try to survive on roughly half of what they once received. Humanitarian staff and child-rights workers began hearing the same blunt calculation from parents: if rations fall further, they will have no choice but to hand daughters over to brokers or send children onto dangerous boats in search of income.

At the same time, the few places that offered girls some breathing room have been disappearing. School closures and the shuttering of youth centers — direct casualties of budget shortfalls — have stripped away classrooms, play areas, and informal support networks that once helped shield adolescents from predators and early marriage. Community workers and teachers say that child marriage, kidnapping, and forced labor rose sharply as these doors closed, leaving girls more exposed in crowded lanes and in the private spaces where decisions about their bodies and futures are made.

“I don’t teach those girls anymore,” a female teacher who teaches higher grades said quietly. “I watch them leave instead. They disappear from the camp one by one, usually at night. When I ask the mothers where their daughters went, they tell me, ‘She has gone to meet her husband in Malaysia.’ But many of those husbands are just names given by brokers. The girls don’t understand that.”

She worries most about what the girls do not know. “They don’t understand what trafficking means,” she explained. “They think the danger is only the waves and the storm. They don’t see the danger in the promises. By the time they understand, they are already in the middle of the sea or locked in a room in another country.”

On the other hand, armed factions operating in and around the camps have issued religious edicts ordering women out of teaching jobs, constraining their public presence, and reinforcing obedience to husbands and male leaders. These directives make it harder for girls to imagine futures as students, professionals, or community organizers and easier for families to see marriage — any marriage — as the only respectable path.

When chronic poverty, collapsing services, and hardline social norms converge, the result is a perfect recruiting ground for traffickers. They walk into a landscape where marrying off a daughter is treated as both a financial release and a form of protection, and simply extend that logic across the water: promising husbands, work, and safety in other countries, while turning stateless girls into the raw material of a maritime trafficking economy.

A deadly passage for brides and daughters

The Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea have become some of the deadliest migration routes for Rohingya refugees in recent years. Around 6,500 Rohingya attempted to cross the Bay of Bengal in 2025; half of those were women and children.

More than 2,800 Rohingya undertook this perilous journey between January 1 and April 13. A single overcrowded boat that left Bangladesh on March 26, 2026, capsized in rough seas, with an estimated 250 people still missing.

When families decide who should attempt a dangerous crossing, they often choose daughters because marriage offers a socially acceptable reason for them to travel or because they believe girls will be “looked after” by husbands abroad.

When a boat sinks, the passengers lost are often adolescent girls — brides-to-be, teenage wives, or daughters trying to escape abuse — whose names are unknown to any official ledger.

Mothers and fathers sit in shelters clutching photos and scraps of paper with phone numbers that never connect, hearing rumors that boats went down near Myanmar or far from Thailand and grappling with the knowledge that their decision to send a daughter on a bridal journey might have been the decision that killed her.

When marriage becomes a ticket to sea

Over the last decade, marriage has quietly turned into a migration route. Within the camps, families talk about “good matches” with men already in Malaysia, Thailand, or Indonesia, often relatives or neighbors who left years earlier through irregular channels.

A groom abroad is imagined as an economic lifeline: someone who can send remittances back to the camp, secure housing, and perhaps offer a safer life than the cramped shelters of Cox’s Bazar. Brokers step into this hope with polished promises.

They convince parents that they can arrange the whole journey. From the camp to Teknaf, the southernmost town of Bangladesh, then by boat across the Bay of Bengal and onwards by land.

They frame it as a family solution — “Your daughter will join her husband, your burdens will lessen, and she will be cared for” — while collecting fees from relatives and cutting deals with smuggling networks.

Rohingya girls, many under 18, board boats believing they are brides in transit. Once at sea, the boat crew holds absolute power. If payments are delayed or families cannot pay the “extra fees” demanded mid-journey, girls are abandoned on smaller vessels or handed over to other traffickers as compensation.

The journey itself can transform a marital reunion into trafficking: the girl’s consent is manipulated, and she is transported and handed over in exchange for profit.

Originally published on Global Voices

A trans visibility march in Washington, DC. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Elections amplify the key challenges that trans people face every day. In recent years, politicians in all regions of the world have weaponized transphobia to win votes and smear opponents. The mismatch between trans people’s appearance and identity documents exposes them to discrimination and harassment at the polls. Social hostility and exclusion cause some trans people to stay out of political life and avoid voting altogether. In this article, global LGBTIQ+ advocacy group Outright International rounds up recent examples of barriers trans people face in elections and charts recommendations to advance full participation in democracy. 

Weaponizing transphobia

In the “super election year” of 2024, hate toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) people was on the ballot in around 85 percent of countries that held elections. Outright’s “Queering Democracy,” the most comprehensive global report on queer people’s participation in elections, found that politicians engaged in anti-LGBTIQ+ campaigning in 51 of the 61 jurisdictions examined in the report.  

VoteLGBT campaign in Brazil encouraging people to vote for LGBTIQ candidates, São Paulo Pride 2024. Credit: Fernando Galacine.

For example, in Ghana, the presidential election became “a competition of who was the most homophobic,” with the top contenders outdoing each other’s commitment to enacting a law that would criminalize simply being trans, queer, or an ally. In the U.S., the Republican Party spent over USD 215 million on anti-trans television ads, fabricating fear around trans people’s access to healthcare and public facilities, even when these issues were not voters’ priorities. 

In at least 25 countries in 2024, candidates used buzzwords like “gender ideology,” “indoctrination,” or “wokism” to demonize equal rights for sexual and gender minorities people, especially trans people. In North Macedonia, the far-right VMRO-DPMNE party won a majority in parliament after running a campaign falsely portraying comprehensive sexuality education as “gender ideology” and “indoctrination.” 

In 2026, around 55 countries are sending their citizens to the ballot box. While researching electoral developments for a follow-up report to “Queering Democracy” (to be released in early 2027), we came across more examples of political transphobia and gender panic, demonstrating a recurrent pattern:

For example, in Colombia, far-right president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella railed against “gender ideology” throughout the campaign. During the launch of his presidential bid, he declared that he does “not accept that our children be conditioned, contaminated with gender ideology to try to change their view of sexuality.”

Ahead of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, in September, the far-right party AfD unveiled its most extremist platform yet, vowing to eradicate “gender ideology” and the “rainbow doctrine” by abolishing gender studies programs, gender quotas, gender-responsive budgeting, and comprehensive sexuality education, among others. AfD is currently leading the polls with a wide margin.

Ahead of the U.S. midterm general election in November 2026, Republican Party members are putting anti-trans measures on the ballot in at least four states, targeting gender-affirming care and trans participation in sports.

In Hungary, bigotry lost at the ballot box this year. Voters came out in record numbers to boot out Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ten months after the historic 2025 Budapest Pride march, the country’s largest demonstration to date. While the queerphobia of Orbán’s Fidesz party was relatively toned down compared to previous elections, it remained core to their values as the party that railroaded a law that effectively banned Pride in 2025. Before the April 2026 election, U.S. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to rally support for Orbán, advancing the false claim that a loss for Orbàn would “condemn children to mutilization [sic] and sterilization in the name of gender care.”

Attacks against trans candidates 

For the few trans people who have managed to break the proverbial glass ceiling and have made it to the ballot, elections can be a violent affair. While all candidates are vulnerable to attacks regardless of their gender, trans candidates confront extreme levels of hostility linked to their identities, striking them at the very core of who they are. They face heightened risks as opponents exploit social norms that police diverse gender identities and expressions:

In Pakistan, an assailant affiliated with the Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami physically attacked a 2024 trans candidate and her team, while her campaign volunteers faced regular verbal harassment.

In Colombia, all six openly trans and nonbinary candidates identified in 2026 reported “misgendering, mockery, and online discrimination,” according to a civil society monitoring report.

In Brazil, hate became fatal: A 2024 local trans candidate was found decapitated a month after the election. In this election cycle, trans candidates were on the receiving end of intense online attacks, with queer group VoteLGBT identifying over 3,000 transphobic comments against one local trans candidate alone.

Candidates can also suffer from transphobia even when they are not trans, with politicians using regressive ideas around gender to undermine opponents. For example, in the U.S., as part of a broader smear campaign, a White House advisor falsely claimed that the Democratic candidate in the Senate race in Texas is “clearly transitioning into a female” and is the party’s “first transgender Senate candidate.” 

Political opponents of French President Emmanuel Macron began propagating rumors that his wife, Brigitte Macron, was trans in the lead-up to the 2022 reelection campaign, building on a malicious rumor about the president’s sexuality that was first circulated during his 2016 presidential bid. In Canada, a few days after the 2025 elections, far-right media targeted Prime Minister Mark Carney’s adult nonbinary child and portrayed Carney as an irresponsible father for allowing his child to transition.

Disenfranchisement

Only 18 countries allow trans people to update their gender marker on official documents on the basis of self-determination. About 42 others allow gender marker changes in some circumstances but impose obstacles such as medical restrictions and bureaucratic red tape. Most countries do not allow trans people to change their legal gender markers on identity documents at all. When appearance and legal documents mismatch, trans people can be exposed to discrimination in polling stations:

In Bangladesh, a trans-led organization, Inclusive Bangladesh, told Outright that in 2026, poll workers turned away some trans people who had not changed their gender markers due to the mismatch between their appearance and their documents or informed them that their votes had already been cast. While Bangladesh recognizes a “third gender” category, known as hijra, implementation is uneven and restrictive.

In Indonesia, queer people interviewed by Outright in 2024 said that polling staff initially refused to allow some trans people to vote due to the mismatch between their appearance and their legal name and gender marker.

Even in countries with a robust nondiscrimination policy framework in place, full electoral rights are not guaranteed:

In Colombia, while the National Electoral Council (CNE) has issued an official protocol explicitly stating that a mismatch between a person’s physical appearance and their ID cannot be used to deny them the right to vote, cases of discrimination persisted in the 2026 elections. Electoral observers documented cases of polling officials subjecting trans voters to misgendering, “disrespectful comments or treatment,” and illegal demands for “extra proof” to validate their identity.

In Spain, one of the 18 countries that offer legal gender recognition based on self-determination, a trans man who attempted to vote in the 2024 European Parliament elections reported that he was accused of committing fraud and was denied the right to vote.

Trans people also faced voter intimidation in Bangladesh in 2026. According to Inclusive Bangladesh, local politicians campaigning for candidates of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami told some trans people in at least six districts not to vote, saying that their votes were “not needed” or would be cast on their behalf. 

Gendered electoral practices that are not directly discriminatory may also have a negative impact on trans people’s ability to vote. In Bhutan, for example, polling queues and booths are segregated by sex, which could be problematic for trans and nonbinary individuals. A certification from a psychiatrist is required to change legal gender markers. During the 2023-2024 National Assembly elections, trans people who had not yet changed their gender marker had to join the queue based on their sex assigned at birth.

This situation puts trans people in a bind: voting can expose them to harm, while abstention robs them of the opportunity to participate in a democratic exercise and fully contribute to the body politic. In countries where legal gender recognition is not possible, such as Botswana, Bulgaria, and Hungary, activists told Outright in 2024 that some trans people avoided voting in 2024 out of fear of discrimination or due to previous negative experiences around misgendering and harassment.

Queering democracy

Despite these barriers, many trans people continue to believe in the promise of democracy and are among the first to defend its value through and beyond the ballot box.

This year, India and Nepal elected their first openly trans lawmakers, at a time when anti-trans actors are making progress toward reversing or undermining hard-won rights.

In Uganda, where a draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act classified “aggravated homosexuality” as a capital crime in 2024, LGBTIQ+ advocates organized informal voter education, community discussions, and training for trans youth on electoral safety leading up to the 2026 general election.

In Thailand, legal gender recognition made its way to the 2026 campaign platform of the People’s Party, the country’s largest opposition party, due to queer movements’ tireless advocacy, showing incremental progress a year after marriage equality became law in the country.

Trans people are full and equal citizens, not fair game as targets to win votes. Our democracies are stronger when everyone, regardless of their gender, can fully participate and assert their place in the body politic. 

Originally published on Global Voices

Inside a Bangladesh refugee camp, a classroom of Rohingya children sing English songs at a UNICEF learning centre, funded by UK aid. Photo credit: Anna Dubuis/DFID via Flickr. CC BY 2.0.

This post is part of Global Voices’ July 2026 Spotlight series, “Statelessness.” This series offers insight into the issue of statelessness and how it hinders people’s freedom of movement, educational opportunities, political access, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

Despite living in Myanmar’s Rakhine State for generations, the Rohingya remain the world’s largest stateless population due to a systematic denial of citizenship. Nine years after 750,000 Rohingya fled violence in Rakhine State to find safety in Bangladesh, nearly one million refugees remain trapped in 33 congested camps in Cox’s Bazar. That legal limbo has seized basic rights to schooling, healthcare, or protection under national law, leaving them entirely dependent on whatever aid arrives.

When a girl has no state to grant her rights and no functioning system left to enforce them, marriage becomes one of a family’s only pathways to give her a semblance of stability.

Maryam, a Rohingya child in Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, was 13 years old when her learning center closed. Her teacher noticed the absence first — an empty chair where a quiet, attentive girl used to sit. Within three weeks of the shutdown of schools after the USAID funding cuts in 2025, Maryam’s mother had agreed to a marriage proposal.

The groom was 34. A local religious figure told the family that since Maryam had reached puberty, delay was spiritually dangerous. Her mother — widowed, in debt, managing three younger children alone — accepted the reasoning. She also accepted the relief. The dowry asked for was barely two thousand Taka — roughly USD 16.

Nobody objected, despite the fact that in Bangladesh, the legal minimum age for marriage is 18 for women and 21 for men. The block’s Majhee, a community leader in that camp, prepared the contract.

Maryam is now 14 and pregnant. Her in-laws will not allow her to return to school, even as new learning centers slowly reopen nearby. Her teacher said, “When a girl gets married, she never comes back to the classroom with her small dream.” For Maryam, that is already permanent.

A widow’s impossible choice

Across 33 official camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf in southern Bangladesh, another story unfolded with quieter violence in camp 20. Suriya, a 40-year-old widow managing her household alone after losing her husband during the sea crossing from Myanmar, owed a debt she could not repay. Her daughter Fatima was 14. Their block majhee — a man in his mid-fifties with three existing wives, controlling food distribution and marriage registration for the entire block — had been offering help for months. Extra food. Debt forgiveness. Promises of protection.

Then came the proposal.

Suriya experienced it as the best available option in an impossible situation. As a policy brief, published by the Center for Peace and Justice, BRAC University, documents precisely: “In most cases, this marriage pressure comes from those who give and offer other forms of protection and support.” The majhee needed a fourth wife — in his community, that number is not excess but evidence of leadership. “If a majhee doesn’t have at least four wives, he is not considered a leader,” a humanitarian worker said during an interview. Fatima became a transaction. The marriage happened informally. No Camp in Charge (CiC) office approval was sought. No age documentation was presented.

These two stories are not exceptional. They are the pattern.

The numbers behind the silence

What is happening inside the camps rarely appears in a single dataset. Verified child marriage cases among refugees rose 21 percent last year, child abductions more than quadrupled to 560 reported cases, and armed group recruitment of children grew eightfold in 2025. A 2021 study on the usage pattern of contraception among Rohingya in the camps found the average age at first marriage in the camps was 15.7 years, and over 62 percent of Rohingya women in the camps were already wed before age 18. These figures were documented before the latest funding collapse and have likely only risen since then.

Patrick Halton, UNICEF’s child protection manager, connected the numbers to the school closures directly: “With the funding cuts, we had to downscale a lot in terms of education. It meant that children have not necessarily had things to do, and we’ve therefore seen this rise in children being married.”

A female teacher who teaches higher grades confirmed during the interview. “I have found a significant number of dropouts because of marriage in my classes,” she said. “When a girl gets married, she never comes back to the classroom with her small dream. Mostly, her in-laws don’t allow her to return to school.”

Faith, puberty, and the architecture of consent

Why do families like Maryam’s not resist? How does religious framing function? The logic circulating in many camps is specific: once a girl reaches puberty, she is marriageable, and delay invites sin.

The above-mentioned policy brief records a religious leader’s position directly — that as long as a child has grown up and the situation allows, parents must marry them to safeguard against fornication. It is the dominant operating framework for many families, especially those without educated male heads of household.

A humanitarian project manager, interviewed via email, described the reality plainly: “Girls are given in marriage before having sexual knowledge. They don’t know anything about sexual safety.” She added something more disturbing still — that many of these girls have no concept of what torture or rape means within marriage. “They believe the husband has the right to torture her,” she said. The violence is not hidden from these girls. It is pre-explained as normal.

Parental preference for religious madrashah education over the general stream of schooling deepens this architecture. This education focuses on basic Quranic recitation, and deeper Islamic jurisprudence operates alongside the official NGO-led learning centers. The camps also host around 1,000 madrashahs, which have become deeply trusted community infrastructure across 33 camps.

“Most parents don’t want their daughter to get a formal education at school. They prefer sending their daughters to madrashah for religious education only,” the same project manager observed.

This means that even when learning centers were open, they were fighting parental ideology.

When dowry collapses

Academic research shows that in Myanmar, child marriage was partly suppressed by the sheer cost of marrying — bribes to military officials, dowries ranging from USD 2,300 to USD 3,300, and additional formal fees. That financial architecture no longer exists in the camps. Dowry costs have fallen. No bribes are required. No military fees apply.

Previous research notes this directly: “In some cases, this means marriage happens before age 18.” The camp system, by removing financial barriers, inadvertently removed one of the few practical brakes on child marriage.

The camp ration system introduced further incentives. Because all refugees receive food rations regardless of household size, men can feed multiple wives without earning income. The traditional economic argument against polygamy — that a man must provide equally for multiple households — collapses entirely.

Silence, impunity, and the collapse of protection

Child marriage and gender-based violence in these camps happen, overwhelmingly, in silence. Camp-in-Charge (CiC) offices, the highest authority within each camp, have approval processes and age verification requirements on paper. In practice, the BRAC University policy brief documents widespread evasion — easy to accomplish because “CiCs do not have any monitoring team to investigate the issue deeply.” Marriages happen informally.

Majhees do not report what they have been paid not to report. Community members who witness violations often stay silent to avoid conflict with those who hold power over their rations, their shelter, and daily survival.

The result is a protection ecosystem that exists structurally but fails operationally. The girls are already married into households that forbid their return to school, already trafficked, already pregnant — they are not recoverable within this crisis response cycle.

The rise of child marriage in Cox’s Bazar is not a single-cause crisis. It is the product of layered failures that reinforce each other. Polygamous marriage, enabled by collapsing dowry costs and ration-based food security, concentrates women and girls as resources in the hands of powerful men.

Maryam’s chair in the learning center remains empty. Fatima’s silence continues as she is moved into the majhee’s compound. These are not tragedies at the margins. They are the logical outcome of a system that has run out of tools to protect the people it was built to serve.

The question is no longer whether child marriage is rising in these camps. The question is whether the international community, having cut the funding that protected these children, will acknowledge that it helped build the conditions for what is now happening.

Originally published on Global Voices

Artist Rasel Rana Sajan joins the “জনতায় আস্থা, মবতন্ত্রে অনাস্থা” (Trust in the People, No Confidence in Mob Rule) protest in Dhaka on 23 December 2025. Artists, cultural workers, and citizens gathered to call for democracy, inclusion, and the rule of law. Photo: Najmul Sagor. Used with permission.

This post is part of Global Voices’ June 2026 Spotlight series, “Gender Diversity.” This series offers insight into gender diversity and how it is being threatened, protected, and preserved around the world. You can support this coverage by donating here.

Eight Hijra and trans women casually gathered in Shahbag, Dhaka, were harassed by a group claiming to practice “mobile journalism” on April 3, 2026, exemplifying the unjust treatment that gender diverse people can face in Bangladesh. They were filmed without consent, asked offensive questions, sexually harassed, and, when they protested, were physically prevented from leaving the area. All eight were then arrested and taken to the Shahbag police station. They were denied access to lawyers for two days, held in inhumane conditions, and ultimately forced to pay fines and sign documents admitting wrongdoing to secure their release. No criminal activity had been alleged. The police were not bystanders. They were participants.

A week later, on the evening of April 10, the same location saw a larger mob attack. Under the banner of the “Azadi Movement,” a crowd brutally assaulted a group of people after labeling those present as “homosexual” and “transgender.” University teachers and citizens were beaten. The violence included sexual harassment of women. A statement signed by 387 citizens — academics, journalists, lawyers, doctors, and activists — condemned both attacks and named the perpetrators: the “Azadi Movement,” backed by Bangladesh Khilafat Majlis, a conservative Islamic political party. The ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government made no response.

What happened at Shahbag is not an isolated incident. It is the result of a crisis building since August 2024, when Bangladesh’s mass uprising ended fifteen years of Awami League rule and opened a period that has proved, for the country’s LGBTQI+ community, one of the most dangerous in recent memory.

A new political landscape

The uprising that forced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee was genuinely historic. It was a student-led movement that brought down an authoritarian government at enormous human cost.

For LGBTQI+ activists, their hopes around the movement were complicated from the start. Many had feared extremist groups would fill the vacuum; some chose not to participate at all. Those who did believed the uprising’s anti-discrimination language extended to them. However, within days of the new government’s formation, the student leaders who had driven the uprising began posting openly anti-LGBTQI+ content on social media.

Islamist groups, emboldened by the transition, intensified attacks on gender and sexual minorities. One early documented incident was an assault on the hijra community in Chak-Andharia, Sherpur, in September 2024. The same month, a mob led by a group of men physically assaulted a hijra individual in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

As the abovementioned Shahbag incident showed, “transgender” and “homosexual” have since become labels deployable against any designated enemy, be it political opponents, inconvenient journalists, or anyone a mob decides to target.

The betrayal of the revolution

During the internet blackout of July 2024, as students faced live ammunition in the streets, Muntasir Rahman used his personal connections to arrange safe houses for student coordinators who would later become the founding leadership of the National Citizen Party (NCP) — among them Rifat Rashid, Mahin Sarker, and current MP Hannan Masud. Muntasir took a direct personal risk to keep the people who would build the new Bangladesh alive.

Months later, when those same leaders formed the NCP, Rahman was appointed Joint Member Secretary. Within hours of the announcement, his identity as a gay man was exposed online, and his appointment was revoked. The party’s senior leadership clarified that no one associated with the LGBTQI+ community held a position in the NCP. By May 2025, the party’s Chief Organizer for the Northern Region was publishing statements on his verified Facebook page describing LGBTQI+ people as “mentally ill” and “cancer to society.”

The men whose lives he helped protect did not defend him. Not one. Rahman’s name appears among the 387 signatories of the civil society statement condemning the Shahbag attacks, the same document that demanded accountability from the government that had expelled him.

Muntasir’s expulsion triggered something wider: posts targeting queer activists flooded social media with names and home addresses of individuals and organizations. In response, many LGBTQI+ organizations were forced to take down their websites and close community Facebook groups that had existed for years. Decades of community infrastructure were deleted.

This is not simply a story about one man’s exclusion. The political formation most associated with the uprising’s democratic aspirations chose, under pressure from religious conservatives, to make its position explicit and public. Hate speech against queer communities has not merely persisted in post-uprising Bangladesh. It has become politically mainstream.

The cost of visibility

On June 10, 2025, Shakil Ahmed, a final-year student at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Dhaka, died by suicide in his home village of Manikganj, following months of targeted harassment. Shakil, a closeted gay man, had been falsely accused of blasphemy due to a Facebook comment he made, which he deleted shortly after posting. A college peer took a screenshot and circulated it, branding him an apostate. By early June, he was receiving direct death threats. Despite issuing a public apology, a post was circulated announcing a public “Shariah-based” trial scheduled for the following morning. He did not survive that night.

The government made no statement on his death. No arrests were made. Law enforcement classified it as unnatural death rather than abetment of suicide. The distinction matters because abetment demands investigation. To describe what happened to Shakil as suicide alone is to ignore the organized campaign of incitement that preceded it.

Silence from the state

Exclusion in Bangladesh rarely comes through explicit legislation. It comes through institutional silence — the meeting never scheduled, the report that omits an entire community, the police station that detains victims and charges them with trafficking, while the mob waits outside. According to activists who requested anonymity, LGBTQI+ groups made repeated attempts to engage the interim government on issues affecting gender-diverse communities, including discussions around the long-pending Transgender Person Rights and Protection Bill 2023. Those meetings were never granted.

The Women’s Affairs Reform Commission, which might have offered a natural vehicle for including gender-diverse voices, released a report containing no mention of LGBTQI+ concerns. For a community already living under a colonial-era law criminalizing same-sex relations, the silence carried a clear message: this government would neither protect nor engage them.

The retreat of development actors

What makes this moment distinct from previous periods of hostility is what is happening alongside the politics. International readers often assume NGOs function as stable allies for LGBTQI+ communities. The reality is increasingly complicated.

Multiple activists in Bangladesh, speaking to Global Voices face-to-face on the condition of anonymity, describe a quiet but significant shift: organizations that previously maintained visible programs on gender and sexual diversity are reducing that visibility. Public advocacy has softened. Institutional language has grown more cautious. Several activists said they had lost employment when fiscal partners chose to drop the LGBTQI+ component of joint projects, not through formal termination, but through the gradual defunding of anything that could attract negative attention. The organizations themselves have not disappeared. They have simply stopped showing up. One interviewee said:

We have been left alone. They will say they are with us when they see us. But they will not call us. And if we call them, they will hardly come. They fear to be seen with us publicly.

The calculus is not difficult to understand. Organizations that depend on government registration and local partnerships cannot afford to be seen as politically inconvenient by an administration whose tolerance of civil society is already uncertain. The ecosystem adjusts. The space contracts. And the community that relied on that ecosystem finds itself more exposed, with fewer institutional buffers between itself and an increasingly hostile public discourse.

The funding crisis

The retreat of NGOs is inseparable from a parallel collapse in international funding.

In 2023, USAID partnered with Bangladeshi organizations to launch the SHOMOTA project, a five-year initiative to support trans and hijra communities across eight cities, planned to directly reach 8,700 people through 2028. When US President Donald Trump froze US foreign aid in January 2025, the project was canceled. The human cost was immediate. The Noboprobhaat Foundation in Rangpur, which provided HIV testing, job skills training, and legal support to rural LGBTQI+ people, was forced to lay off half its staff and close its offices. By late 2025, the foundation expected to halt roughly 70 percent of its activities.

The crisis extends well beyond US policy. The Global Philanthropy Project estimated that at least USD 105 million in donor government aid for LGBTQI+ rights was at risk globally, with anticipated cuts from the Netherlands and Britain. Corporate sponsors worldwide also withdrew in response to the backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The point is not simply that money is disappearing. It is that these cuts land hardest on communities where international support was not supplementing a strong domestic base, but substituting for one.

What comes next

In October 2025, a 23-year-old trans activist named Sahara Chowdhury Rebil stood alone in the rain at Shahid Minar in Dhaka, on hunger strike, demanding marriage rights for LGBTQI+ people. It may have been the first such public protest in Bangladesh’s history. By the next afternoon, as hostility mounted, fellow activists persuaded her to end her fast to avoid physical attack. But before retreating, she released a 178-page Bangladeshi Queer Manifesto (linked in the QR code below), the first of its kind in a nation of 172 million people.

Sahara Chowdhury Rebil started her hunger strike at the Central Shahid Minar in Dhaka. Image by Ahad taken on October 10, 2025. Used with permission.

That image of one person starving in the rain, declaring their rage in writing, is not a story of defeat. It is a story of a movement doing what movements do when institutions fail them: going back to basics. Documenting. Naming. Insisting on existing. In 2024, of 70 documented incidents of violence against LGBTQI+ people in Bangladesh, only 13 were officially recorded as criminal cases. The community documents anyway. Because documentation, even without institutional consequence, is its own form of resistance.

The 2016 murder of LGBTQI+ rights activist Xulhaz Mannan was a brutal warning directed at Bangladesh’s progressive civil society. Nearly a decade later, Shakil Ahmed’s death signals that the same forces remain intact, only now operating with greater coordination, technological reach, and state apathy. This crisis did not begin in 2024. The uprising accelerated it.

Bangladesh’s queer movement is not facing a single enemy. It is facing a convergence: a political class performing religious credibility, an international funding architecture in freefall, an NGO sector recalibrating toward self-preservation, and a colonial-era law that still criminalizes their existence. Each force alone is manageable. Together, they are designed to exhaust. Until Bangladesh reckons with the impunity that runs beneath all of this, the movement will keep surviving in spite of the state rather than with its protection. The bitter truth here is that surviving is not the same as being free, and the July 2024 uprising did not happen merely to survive.

Originally published on Global Voices

Boats with refugees are arriving at the beaches of Skala Sykamia, Lesvos Island, Greece. Image via Wikimedia Commons by Ggia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

After three years of construction work in Dhaka, Ishmam, 28, from Shariatpur, Bangladesh, had accumulated about USD 6,500 in savings when the dalal (local broker) approached him with a proposition that seemed almost too good to refuse. The route appeared straightforward: Bangladesh through Saudi Arabia to Libya, then a brief Mediterranean crossing to Italian shores, where monthly earnings could exceed what he made annually.

“From Bangladesh through Saudi Arabia to Libya, then from Libya attempting the boat crossing to Greece or Italy,” he recounted months later, describing what he believed would be a well-established pathway used by thousands before him.

However, upon reaching Libya, reality shifted dramatically. He spent three weeks in what smugglers called a “game house” — a holding facility where some 200 migrants waited for favorable weather conditions and boat availability.

The promised boat finally arrived at night, overcrowded beyond any safe margin, with nearly 150 people packed into a vessel designed for perhaps 40.

“We went with the hope of reaching Italy for a better future,” he said, remembering the moment the engine started and the Libyan coast began receding. “The boat traveled for only 20 minutes before the coast guard caught us.”

Ishmam is one of many Bangladeshis who set out in pursuit of the European dream, only to discover it was far different from what smugglers had promised. After returning to Bangladesh in May 2026, he shared his experience with a research team that included the author as part of a migration research project.

Another returnee’s experience revealed an even darker dimension of this system. “The migrant facilitators in Libya are Bangladeshis themselves. Billions of dollars are leaving our country and flowing to Libya into this network,” he revealed. The dalal who recruited him in Bangladesh maintained daily contact throughout the journey, not for welfare checks but to coordinate payment demands with Libyan handlers.

“My dalal took USD 12,915 from me to take me successfully to a European country, and now I have returned like an offender,” he stated. His detention lasted 23 days, a deliberate degradation designed to pressure the family to pay a ransom.

These two cases shine a light on a smuggling network that has turned the Bangladesh-Libya-Italy corridor into one of the world’s most lucrative irregular migration markets.

Irregular migration through the Central Mediterranean

Around 15,228 Bangladeshi migrants arrived in Italy via the Central Mediterranean Route in 2022, making Bangladesh the third most-represented nationality in terms of irregular migration. This figure represented a stark increase from just 349 arrivals in 2018.

Approximately 14,000 Bangladeshis reached Italy through this route in 2024. Between June 2023 and August 2025, nearly 6,000 Bangladeshi nationals were repatriated from Libya with assistance from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a branch of the United Nations.

This number grew to 8,174 by December 2025, with multiple repatriation flights carrying hundreds of migrants each month throughout 2024 and 2025.

The routes for migration have proliferated and been adapted to enforcement measures. The primary pathway flows from Bangladesh through Dubai to Egypt and finally Benghazi, though 50 percent of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants now enter Libya through Turkey.

An alternative route through India and Sri Lanka is activated when the Dhaka airport authorities increase scrutiny. Other transit countries include Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Turkey, Tunisia, and the UAE — creating a complex network that shifts and adapts to enforcement pressures.

Comparing legal and irregular migration costs

The economics of this system reveal why recruitment networks find irregular migration so lucrative. In 2020, the average legal migration cost for Bangladeshi workers, including airfare, visa costs, and agent fees, was USD 3,520 for Saudi Arabia and between USD 2,420 and USD 3,230 for Oman, Qatar, and Malaysia. These costs have risen, with the average migration cost now exceeding USD 3,730, as of December 2025.

A male worker now spends USD 4,035 to USD 7,265 to reach Saudi Arabia, while migration to Malaysia costs USD 2,825 to USD 4,845. The government officially set costs at USD 1,330 for Saudi Arabia, USD 1,290 for Malaysia, USD 870 for the UAE, USD 860 for Kuwait, USD 815 for Oman, and USD 790 for Bahrain, but actual expenses run 2.5 to 2.6 times these amounts.

However, the Libya-Italy corridor operates on an entirely different scale. Travel from Bangladesh to Libya alone ranges from USD 4,500 to USD 4,900, while the Mediterranean crossing and migration to Europe costs between USD 3,000 and USD 4,000 per person.

Most Bangladeshis pay between USD 10,000 and USD 14,000 for the complete journey, with many ultimately spending USD 15,000 to USD 17,000 after extortion and additional costs inside Libya.

In Bangladesh, brokers collect initial fees of USD 4,035 to USD 12,915 for documentation and passage. Transit facilitators in Dubai, Egypt, Kuwait, Turkey, India, or Sri Lanka coordinate group movement and collect fees for each handover. Once in Libya, airport sponsors demand payments, armed groups extract “security fees,” drivers charge for internal transport, and coastal smugglers control Mediterranean access.

The game house system represents perhaps the most cynical extraction mechanism. “The game house operates just like a jail. You can’t talk; there is no means for communication. They keep 200–300 people together. Those whose money runs out get sent back; those whose money is not finished get left behind,” explained a migrant describing these pre-departure holding facilities where families receive continuous payment demands while their relatives wait for boat departures.

The ‘gold migrant’ phenomenon

Bangladeshi migrants are considered “gold” within Libya’s smuggling economy because they represent the most reliable source of payment. Behind every migrant stands a family that remains deeply involved throughout the journey — negotiating with brokers in Bangladesh, arranging financing, coordinating payments during transit, and liaising with smugglers whenever problems arise.

Researchers have estimated that the Bangladesh-Libya-Italy smuggling economy generates USD 160–190 million annually, using 2024’s baseline of 14,000 arrivals in Italy and applying documented price structures. This represents a lower-bound estimate, excluding those who paid but never arrived in Italy — migrants intercepted at sea, detained indefinitely in Libya, or who perished during crossing attempts.

The human resale market within Libya adds another layer of exploitation. Migrants entering legally by air are promised temporary work while waiting for their “next visa” to Italy. Upon arrival, their passports disappear under the pretext of processing paperwork. They work immediately in construction or service sectors but receive no payment. Eventually, they learn they’ve been “sold” to another employer or broker — demonstrating a market where migrants function as tradable assets.

Bangladesh’s contribution to migrants smuggling market. Infographic by the author. Used with permission.

A a quarter of a billion dollar future?

The trajectory suggests continued acceleration. Bangladeshis ranked first among asylum applicants in Italy, with 23,450 requests recorded in 2023. The trend had intensified further, with 2,589 Bangladeshis landing on Italian shores during January and February 2025 alone — double the 1,206 who arrived during the same period in 2024.

So why is this shadowy, dangerous industry so successful? First, legal migration costs continue rising. The expenses for low-skilled overseas job seekers to major destinations now range from USD 3,230 to USD 8,070. It takes at least 10 months of work to recover migration costs, forcing workers to accept lower wages while limiting their ability to negotiate.

Second, Gulf countries have tightened recruitment opportunities and imposed migration restrictions, pushing would-be migrants toward alternative destinations and illegal pathways. Research published in 2024 documents how brutal working conditions, combined with restrictive government policies toward migrant workers, lead some to reroute their “Dubai Dream” to Europe.

If the current growth rate of illegal migration continues — from approximately 14,000 arrivals in 2024 to an estimated 20,000 in 2025 — and if per-person costs remain between USD 10,000 and USD 17,000, the smuggling economy could reach USD 200 million to USD 340 million in gross revenue.

Even accounting for interceptions, failed attempts, and returnees, a conservative projection suggests the market could exceed USD 250 million annually by 2026, cementing its position as one of the world’s largest irregular migration corridors.

Unless Bangladesh establishes genuinely accessible legal migration pathways, thousands more will calculate that risking USD 12,915 for a twenty-minute boat ride represents their best chance at the life they’ve been promised.

Originally published on Global Voices

Two security cameras mounted on a pole. Representative image by user Atypeek Dgn via Pexels. Used under a Pexels License.

For years, there was a familiar routine for those who broke a traffic rule in Dhaka, Bangladesh: a brief standoff with a traffic officer, a word or two of pleading, sometimes a quiet handover of cash (a bribe). Other times, drivers simply slipped past unnoticed. Those days may now be coming to an end.

Since May 7, 2026, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered traffic cameras have gone live on Dhaka’s main roads. Installed by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) at key signal crossings and intersections, these cameras run on software officially called the “AI-Based Road Transport Act 2018 Violation Detection System.” When a driver breaks the rules, a notice lands on the vehicle owner’s phone within hours.

This marks the first time Bangladesh has deployed a fully automated digital traffic enforcement system, one that files cases without any human involvement.

How the AI camera system works

When a vehicle runs a red light, crosses the stop line, or blocks the left lane, an AI camera automatically scans the number plate and generates a case on the spot. The software records a few seconds of video footage, cross-references it with the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) database to identify the vehicle owner, and sends a prosecution notice to their address.

In other words, run a red light or drive the wrong way, and the evidence, along with a formal case notice, goes straight to the vehicle owner. Those who receive notices can also view the video of their own violation online.

Former head of the Police Special Branch, Golam Rasul, wrote in a Facebook post: “During the day, you might be able to talk your way out of a ticket with a traffic sergeant, put in a word, make a call, or if you’re bold enough, drop the name of some influential uncle. But this AI camera has no mind, no feelings, no mercy, and it doesn’t scare easily. It only knows two things: the rules, and your number plate.”

DMP has confirmed that cameras are currently active at five major intersections, and installations are underway in additional areas.

Over 1,000 cases in 10 days, thousands more expected

According to the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), the sophisticated traffic signals and e-prosecution platform have generated around 1,000 traffic cases since their launch on May 7. DMP aims to achieve fully automated case filing within six months across Dhaka, largely removing the need for manual case filing by traffic sergeants or inspectors. Any violation of traffic or motor transport laws, anywhere in the city, will trigger an automatic case and fine. DMP has announced plans to install cameras at a minimum of 500 points across the capital within the next six months.

There’s another catch worth knowing: regardless of who is driving the car when a mistake is made, the case will be filed against the vehicle’s owner. Whether you drive your own car or hand the wheel to another driver, the penalty points will be deducted from the owner’s driving license. Under BRTA rules, every driver is given 12 points under their license; once those points run out, the license gets canceled.

Mixed reactions on Facebook traffic groups

The Facebook groups Traffic Alert (over 447,000 subscribers) and Dhaka Traffic Update (37,300 subscribers) have been buzzing with debate since the cameras went live.

Many are genuinely pleased. Osman Gani, who works as a private driver, said: “People used to be careless about seat belts, but now that violations automatically trigger cases, everyone is forced to comply. When drivers follow the rules, the road feels a little safer.”

But criticisms are also plentiful. In the Dhaka Traffic Alert group, one user named Ismail Hossain wrote:

AI cameras are catching ordinary people’s cars at signals… fine. But what about local buses picking up passengers in the middle of the road? Rickshaws going the wrong way? Buses belching black smoke without fitness certificates? Transport blocking the road with no designated stops? When does the camera become ‘automatic’ for them? If there’s a law, it should apply to everyone. Catching only private cars and bikes doesn’t make a ‘smart traffic’ system. If the biggest troublemakers on the road are ignored, people won’t question just the AI — they’ll question the entire system.

Another user, Omar Faruk, raised a different concern: “Pedestrians don't follow signals either. While vehicles get a green light, pedestrians still cross, which forces cars near the front to inch forward and stop. If the camera targets those cars, why should the owner bear the blame?”

On a more encouraging note, a user named BrilliantAlligator9993 shared a photo taken at 5:15 a.m. at Banglamotor and Karwan Bazar, showing drivers actually obeying traffic lights at that early hour. The caption read: “Glad to see people have actually listened and are following the traffic lights. Really want to see how DMP Traffic deals with the buses, CNGs [natural gas tankers], and auto-rickshaws.”

The emergence of scammers has also alarmed people. Fraudsters have been calling vehicle owners, falsely claiming they were caught violating traffic laws, and demanding money. DMP has warned the public that no fine should ever be paid to an individual, only through official banking channels.

Another incident briefly went viral: a photo circulating online appeared to show an AI camera stolen from a 300-foot stretch of road. The X account Voice of Gen-Z posted:

দেশের বিভিন্ন স্থানে লাগানো অত্যাধুনিক এআই ক‍্যামেরাগুলো চুরি করে নিয়ে যাচ্ছে একটি মহল।

এটি ঢাকার ৩০০ ফিট সড়কের একটি ক‍্যামেরার দৃশ‍্য। পুরো সিস্টেম খুলে নিয়ে গেছে। pic.twitter.com/KMFsyF9OOL

— Voice of Gen-Z (@VoGen_Z) May 11, 2026

Some people are removing and taking away the state-of-the-art AI cameras installed across the country. This is a scene from a camera on a 300-foot road in Dhaka. The entire system has been taken away.

It later turned out the camera had not been stolen at all, it had fallen and broken in strong winds. The object in question was also a traffic light, not an AI camera.

Battery-powered rickshaws: The question the AI can’t answer

Rickshaws are a major cause of traffic jam in Dhaka metro. Image via Wikimedia Commons by Towhidul. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The biggest challenge for Dhaka's AI cameras may not be drivers who disobey the rules; it may be the vehicles the system simply cannot see.

Unregistered manual and battery-powered rickshaws flood the city’s lanes and main roads in enormous numbers, operating entirely outside the law with no registration and no license plates. The AI camera system’s entire mechanism depends on scanning plates and matching them to the BRTA database. A vehicle with no plate is, for all practical purposes, invisible to it.

DMP and the government have yet to offer any clear explanation of how these vehicles will be handled under the new system. The question keeps emerging on Facebook traffic groups, and so far, it remains unanswered.

Professor B M Mainul Hossain, Director of the Institute of Information Technology (IIT) at the University of Dhaka, told Global Voices via telephone:

The success of this initiative will depend on a few key things: system transparency, the right to appeal, and above all, a clear policy on unregistered vehicles. AI cameras are undoubtedly an option to explore towards restoring order on Dhaka’s roads. But technology alone is not enough. What's also needed is a comprehensive reform of the entire transport management system.

Dhaka’s roads are now under the watch of AI. The real question is whether that watch will be fair, and whether it will look equally at everyone.

Originally published on Global Voices

A protest in Washington DC, USA, calling on officials to protect transgender youth. Image from Flickr. License CC BY-SA 2.0.

By Brindaalakshmi K

This post is part of Global Voices’ June 2026 Spotlight series, “Gender Diversity.” This series offers insight into gender diversity and how it is being threatened, protected, and preserved around the world. You can support this coverage by donating here.

This article specifically looks at the impact of the U.S. policy changes on a sub-group, LBQT (Lesbian, Bisexual, Queer, and Trans) people within the LGBTQ+ spectrum in South Asia, to understand the policy impact on people gender-assigned female at birth or trans-feminine people.

In January 2025, the new Trump administration in the United States issued executive orders impacting social justice and development work around the world. While the most obvious and visible impact has been funding cuts, these developments have brought about a palpable shift in the understanding of gender and related power hierarchies. Tracing the impact of recent US policy changes across the geographies of my work in South Asia and the Caribbean nation of Belize has revealed different anti-gender strategies that are being engaged to influence state mechanisms, civil society organisations, funding agencies and big tech companies.

A systematic effort seems to be underway to dismantle the support systems established to advance gender justice worldwide, reshaping the understanding of gender and gender justice. In this article, I trace some specific anti-gender tactics and their cumulative impact on the data generated on these gender issues — data which is essential for driving development decisions. 

Direct attack on subversion tactics 

My sources observed that the US-imposed tariffs have resulted in increased economic pressure, shifting political priorities for different nations. Countries clamouring to bridge the financial deficit created by the new tariffs have resulted in LBQT rights taking a backseat for many countries, especially those that still criminalise homosexuality. With the current anti-gender attacks on any gender-related work, organisations are being forced to reimagine the manner in which they describe their work. As a general trend, these policy changes have impacted all gender related work, with a more immediate impact on organisations that specifically work on LGBTQ+ rights. 

In South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which criminalise homosexuality, it is illegal for organisations working on LGBTQ+ issues to fundraise for their work, leading to active erasure of these issues. Historically, these organisations have been forced to use the alternative tactic of raising funds under gender and gender-based violence as broad buckets. A source who opted to remain anonymous observed the US policy changes threaten these tactics, too. “Historically, as a movement, we have been using subversion to raise funds for our work. Now these policy changes are targeting these very tactics, giving us no way out.” Such strategies are a double-edged sword since they help raise funds in countries with criminalisation, but also result in erasure and misrepresentation of these populations. 

The consequences of grouping LGBTQ+ issues under the umbrella of gender and gender diversity look different in a country like India. Despite decriminalising homosexuality in 2018, “There is a lack of awareness about LGB identities within government departments and even the police,” shared Sandi, founder and general secretary of Mobbera Foundation, India. “They use the language of LGBT while talking about programmes for inclusion, but what they really mean by that is transgender inclusion. These programmes only address transgender persons, and even within that community, they only know trans women. They don’t know about trans men either,” he added.

A PRIDE festival in Nepal. Image from Wikimedia Commons. License  CC BY-SA 3.0.

Sources in Nepal and Belize shared that they had to change the language used in their programming and funding applications to get support. “We normally use terms like GSM (gender and sexual minorities), LBT and LBQ women as terms in our programming. They are now trying to erase these identities. Recently, we were working on a project that had LBT women in the title. The donor asked us to change the term LBT to ‘minorities’ in the project title following the recent US policy changes,” shared a gender professional working on LBQT+ issues in Nepal. 

Charrice Talbert, president of Promoting Empowerment Through Awareness for Lesbian and Bisexual Women (PETAL), Belize, shared, “The idea has always been for us to package our work differently because of the churches. The churches have a problem if we mention marriage or children while talking about LGBT community.” She added, “With the US policy changes, some agencies that were funding LGBT issues are now being forced to use different language.” 

Changes in the language of evidence-building efforts 

There have been notable changes in the language used to record evidence on different gender issues. In 2023, the term “technology-facilitated gender-based violence” (TFGBV) was introduced. The term was coined to recognise the use and role of artificial intelligence (AI) in gender-based violence by different UN agencies. This term is increasingly used instead of online gender-based violence. UN Women says, “While many other terms — such as digital or online violence — are commonly used, ‘technology-facilitated gender-based violence’ better reflects how technology can enable harm, both online and offline.” This replacement raises questions about the validity of evidence gathered thus far on online gender-based violence.

A more drastic development has been the recent demand by Project 2025, a right-wing political initiative in the US, asking the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to frame transgender ideology as extremist and a domestic threat following the shooting of Charlie Kirk, a right-wing political activist and an ally of Donald Trump. Although an event specific to the US, this incident aligns with the disinformation campaigns against gender ideologies that have sprouted in different parts of the world. Following the US, several sources observe the shift in the stance of different governments, like the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, among others, on gender issues. This is significantly impacting the accountability mechanisms available in the development sector to counter the anti-gender narrative.

The shift in the development sector’s language is influencing the way development issues are defined, prioritised, and funded. Gender as a term is changing to fit the heteronormative understanding of gender and sexuality. In March 2026, United Nations member states rejected U.S. efforts to limit the understanding of gender to men and women. The shift in the language of evidence-building efforts also changes the kind of gender issues that have evidence to substantiate the need for support. This will continue the active erasure of LGBT realities and hamper efforts to advocate for their inclusion.

Justice system targeting the LBQT+ community

A Sri Lankan LGBTQ+ rights activist said, “A lot of online hate speech and anti-LGBT speech has now become normalised in Sri Lanka, with Trump’s re-election. This perpetuates a narrative shaped by disinformation.” There is a general lack of support from the Sri Lankan police when it comes to LBQT rights. There have been cases when the police have refused to file complaints by LBQT persons against perpetrators of violence, leading them to be pushed into silence when abuse happens.

In case of extortion or non-consensual sharing of intimate images, the police often target the individuals for having the video on their phone, framing it as a violation of the state’s obscenity laws. Several sources said that this stops queer individuals from approaching the police. 

Women in Belize experience similar police violations, a source shared. “Women are mostly targeted for sharing nudes. It doesn’t matter if your nudes are leaked. The fact that you shot it shows your intention of sharing it, so then a case is filed against you.” Similar to Sri Lanka, queer persons in Belize find it difficult to file police complaints. “Very often, people are forced to go to the media first before the police take any action. The commissioner then takes action because he doesn’t want the police looking bad.”

According to a feminist digital security expert, digital security threats against gender and sexual minorities are very common in South Asia. She said, “Issues of trolling and extortion are common. In Sri Lanka, LGBTQ+ organisations are often specifically targeted. In India, on the other hand, transgender persons have been facing a lot of financial fraud and extortion. Indians often use the religious and ethnic identities of gender and sexual minorities for targeted online gender based violence.” 

Due to the criminalisation of homosexuality in Bangladesh, many LBQ women seek partners online. In recent years, there has been a rise in cases of men pretending to be women to target LBQ women on dating apps. “Such cases were previously common among gay men. Now this has become an issue even for LBQ women.”

The culture of disinformation influencing the rights of LBQT+ people has taken a drastic turn in Pakistan. Disinformation tactics are used to target the rights of gender and sexual minorities, especially transgender people, owing to their visible presence and legal recognition. In 2018, Pakistan enacted the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, which was considered a progressive statute in the country. Sources note a drastic overturn of several provisions in recent years because of a disinformation campaign by influencers who cited religion as a reason to push for a rollback on transgender people’s rights, using hashtags such as #SayNoToTransgenderAct and #AmendTransgender Act. As a result of this campaign, the police made wrongful arrests and booked 60 transgender people for allegedly organising an objectionable private party. In March 2026, India, in a similar move, amended the provisions of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019, reversing the fragile progress of transgender rights in the country. 

Social media control

There has been a drastic increase in the anti-gender attacks online, moulded by local laws and the policies of big tech companies that have increasingly downsized their accountability to their users. Evidently, these attacks are using disinformation and online gender-based violence as tools to attack the rights of LBQT people. 

In an effort to align itself with the Trump administration, Meta announced sweeping changes to its content moderation policies and initiatives across all its platforms in January 2025. This includes the Hateful Conduct policy, which controls the manner in which gender and sexual minorities may report targeted attacks on these platforms. The language used in the January update allowed for anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech and misinformation. The impact of these changes is more adverse in South Asian countries with more fundamentalist political regimes, as well as the criminalisation of homosexuality.

Big tech and social media platforms have used compliance with local laws as an excuse to censor and control content on queer and transgender issues. Platforms like TikTok have admittedly shadowbanned LGBT content for many years now, owing to their own categorisation of any content by queer and transgender content creators as sexual content. 

Apart from self-censorship, this affects the type of content that is visible and available to consumers. Consumers in certain jurisdictions, such as the European Union, have legal recourse to address shadowbanning in specific cases. Criminalisation and limited rights of gender and sexual minorities make it harder to insulate queer and transgender-related content from being shadowbanned in other geographies. 

Through these tactics, algorithms are manipulated to shape the narrative on gender-related topics. In addition, the lack of sufficient protection on social media platforms against anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech is leading to a shift in the perception of these issues and the general attitude of the public at large towards these marginalised communities. 

What’s to become of the data for the development agenda? 

With the impact of these ongoing developments, organisations working on LGBTQ+ rights are being forced to move away from using the language of human rights to protect the rights of this population group. In an attempt to continue their work, some organisations are devising newer strategies to support their agenda. “The Democratic argument is a good one. We are shifting our narrative to security and defence. We are speaking about how China and Russia are using anti-LGBT narrative to undermine democracy. Russia is funding anti-LGBT campaigns before elections to divide people,” said  Alex Farrow, the CEO of Kaleidoscope Trust in the UK. With this move away from the language of human rights, Farrow also notices human rights having a lesser impact on donor countries and even the United Nations. 

These concerns also raise questions about the global data-for-development agenda as a whole. The shifting focus of the global development agenda, accountability mechanisms, and the consequent changes in the language of development discourse on gender issues hardwire the erasure of the LBQTIA+ realities within different gender data sets. To begin with, global development datasets like the Global Gender Gap Index, among others, present data in binary form and do not sufficiently acknowledge the opportunity and economic cost of erasure for individuals who are not heteronormative in their gender or sexuality. This data gap is further widened and strengthened by the reshaping of public opinions on these issues using social media. The current global socio-political developments are systematically promoting the anti-gender agenda to fit individuals into the hetero-patriarchal understanding of gender and gender roles by influencing the data that is fed into automated decision-making systems.  

Originally published on Global Voices

Photo by Bastian Riccardi from Pexels. Used under a Pexels License.

For the past several months, a coordinated digital campaign has targeted community archivists in Bangladesh who document and preserve audiovisual material related to the July 2024 Student-People’s Mass Uprising, including its history, collective memory, and records of human rights violations.

These attacks systematically exploit weaknesses in Meta’s copyright enforcement mechanisms, with the primary objective of removing Facebook pages that host critical documentation of the movement. Despite repeated appeals to Meta by affected community archivists, the responses have been limited and largely ineffective.

We spoke with at least three young documentarians through messaging platforms and phone calls. They confirmed that their Facebook pages functioned as informal but highly significant digital archives of this historical moment. A substantial portion of this content is already being used as evidentiary material in proceedings at the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal addressing mass violence linked to the July 2024 uprising.

When copyright strikes are submitted using fake email identities and fabricated claims, Meta removes videos and images without adequate verification or due process. For many self-organized archivist communities, Facebook has served as their primary platform for public engagement and memory preservation. As a result of Meta’s failure to ensure adequate safeguards, critical documentation is being lost, directly affecting broader transitional justice processes.

A vital platform, with coordinated abuse

Saleh Mahmud Rayhan, a student involved in the July 2024 uprising, later co-founded the July Revolutionary Alliance (JRA) with a group of his contemporaries. In an interview conducted with Global Voices via Zoom, Rayhan stated that the organization’s mandate includes collecting, preserving, and disseminating videos documenting human rights violations, using Facebook as its primary platform to reach the public.

For many young, self-organized communities in Bangladesh — often operating without formal training, technical capacity, or institutional funding — Facebook has become the default infrastructure for documentation and outreach. As the most widely used platform among Bangladeshi internet users, it serves not only as a publishing tool but also as a space to amplify victims’ voices and share evidence.

In JRA’s case, these materials have contributed to broader accountability efforts, including ongoing proceedings at the International Crimes Tribunal examining allegations of crimes against humanity, including murder and enforced disappearance, linked to the July 2024 student-led protests.

On February 15, 2026, Meta suspended JRA’s main Facebook page, which had approximately 547,000 followers, citing multiple copyright violations. However, the materials shared on the page were user-generated and distributed for non-commercial, public-interest purposes. While JRA does not claim ownership of all content, closer scrutiny suggests that those submitting the copyright complaints were not the rightful owners either.

On 22 March, JRA’s backup page, “July Revolutionary Alliance, South Region,” was also suspended on similar grounds. Although the page was later restored after multiple appeals, it remains at risk due to ongoing false claims.

Facebook removed content based on a third-party copyright claim, submitted via “shakhawathossain1986@outlook.com” on behalf of “H M Murad,” concerning a viral photograph of a politician, despite the email address not belonging to him, which concerned a photograph that had also been publicly shared by the politician's party.

A similar pattern affected The Red July, another self-organized community archivist group formed by survivors of the July 2024 uprising that works to document violations and amplify affected voices. The group lost two of its Facebook pages under comparable circumstances.

Sajib Hossain, an administrator of The Red July, stated during a phone call and later provided supporting documentation via WhatsApp messages that the group’s two primary pages — one with approximately 300,000 followers and the other with 125,000, named “The Red July Production”—simultaneously received between eight and ten copyright strikes. As a result, the pages were suspended almost immediately, leaving administrators with insufficient time to respond or implement protective measures.

Meta removed a post by The Red July, a photo of Bhutan's PM in Bangladesh, due to a false copyright claim filed by Slang name id using the derogatory email “julycdi7890@gmail.com.”

Findings from the investigation indicate that these claims do not appear to constitute legitimate copyright disputes. Instead, individuals are seemingly creating fake email accounts and submitting third-party complaints. Meta appears to accept these claims without sufficient verification, resulting in the removal of content, including materials originally published by the communities themselves. Automated appeal mechanisms have so far provided limited effective remedies.

Meta’s failure to safeguard the affected pages

Both organizations report a consistent pattern of targeted harassment. They describe receiving explicit threats from cyber groups aligned with political actors connected to ongoing trials for crimes against humanity. These threats often demand the removal of posts related to political figures, including former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

A Facebook page named “Network-71” publicly declared its intention to remove content from The Red July. Similarly, accounts using the names “Mahir Chowdhury” and “Nadim Chowdhury” issued public threats to take down posts related to the July 2024 uprising.

Shortly after such warnings, waves of false copyright claims are reportedly submitted from anonymous or unverified email accounts targeting the same content. In several cases, individuals publicly announce intended takedowns, issue threats, and later share screenshots celebrating successful removals. See here and here.

Network 71 publicly admitted to falsely reporting the post that led Facebook to remove activist Facebook groups.

These posts, often accompanied by celebratory or abusive language, suggest deliberate and coordinated misuse of platform reporting systems. Despite these clear indicators, including prior threats and synchronized reporting, Meta has not taken effective action to identify or prevent this pattern of abuse.

Saleh Mahmud Rayhan described how one account sent direct messages warning that specific posts had to be removed or the entire page would be taken down. Within two days, around seven posts were targeted with false claims. Meta accepted the claims, removed the posts, and subsequently suspended the page.

JRA representatives later contacted individuals whose names had been used in the complaints. Those individuals confirmed that they had not submitted any copyright claims, indicating that their identities may have been misused through fabricated email accounts. Rayhan emphasized that these removals resulted in the loss of critical visual evidence documenting human rights violations during the uprising.

This image, sourced from JRA, illustrates the progression of threats. Initially, there were private demands to remove a post critical of their party; when this was refused, they proceeded to submit a fraudulent copyright claim.

A recurring tactic of digital repression in Bangladesh

The use of copyright claims to suppress political opponents is not new in Bangladesh. Rather, it appears to have become a recurring method used to restrict critical voices online.

In 2022, independent news site Netra News reported that groups linked to the then-Awami League-led government were involved in hacking critics’ Facebook accounts. Around the same period, separate reporting documented how a hacker group took down Amar Desh Online, a media outlet critical of the government, through the use of false copyright claims.

Recent incidents suggest that similar tactics are now being used more broadly: not only against political opponents, but also against human rights groups, investigative journalists, and fact-checking initiatives.

One example involves The Dissent, a Bangladesh-based investigative and fact-checking platform that has been targeted by fake copyright claims. The publication’s editor, Qadaruddin Shishir, stated in an interview that several of their reports, including fact-checks of AI-generated images, were removed from Facebook after being flagged for alleged copyright violations. Despite the content being originally produced by their own reporters, Shishir noted that these complaints originated from unverifiable email addresses but were nonetheless accepted by Meta Platforms, Inc. without meaningful scrutiny.

These fraudulent tactics have affected a broad spectrum of voices, with activists and journalists among the primary targets. The reach of these claims has extended to the former interim government’s official advisory pages, the social media accounts of the Head of Government, and memorial tributes to slain activist Osman Hadi. The system’s lack of scrutiny was further highlighted when original materials, including a journalist’s own photography, were erroneously flagged as infringing and removed from the platform.

In several cases, coordinated groups have openly claimed responsibility for these takedowns. Groups identifying themselves as “Crack Platoon, Bangladesh Cyber Force,” “Dark Cyber Gang,” and “Qawmi Cyber Expert Team” have publicly stated that they use copyright reporting tools to remove pages and accounts, and have shared evidence of these actions online.

Platform failure and an accountability gap

These incidents point to significant weaknesses in Meta’s copyright enforcement processes. The lack of effective verification appears to allow coordinated actors to misuse reporting systems to target activists, archivists, and journalists.

This issue extends beyond routine content moderation concerns. The removal of such content affects the ability to document events, share information, and preserve records that may be relevant to accountability processes.

Without stronger safeguards — including improved verification, greater transparency in decision-making, and accessible appeal mechanisms — these practices are likely to continue, with broader implications for digital rights and public-interest documentation in Bangladesh.

Originally published on Global Voices

Motorists queue at a Dhaka fuel station on March 9, 2026, during government-imposed rationing that left delivery riders and commuters waiting hours to purchase limited fuel supplies. Photo by Zulker Naeen. Used with permission.

Rashid Ahmed waited two hours at a fuel station in Dhaka’s Mirpur district on March 10, watching the line of motorcycles stretch into the next block as the pump operator turned away customer after customer. The forty-two-year-old delivery rider had visited three stations since dawn, each time finding either empty tanks or queues too long to wait through before his first delivery deadline. His motorcycle sat idle while his family’s income evaporated with each passing hour.

Ahmed’s frustration mirrors the experience of hundreds of thousands across Bangladesh as government-imposed rationing collides with daily survival. The rationing emerged from a crisis that began thousands of kilometers away in the Persian Gulf.

During mid March, the government withdrew the temporary rationing system for fuel sales; however, shortages, long queues, and irregularities at most filling stations made it difficult for vehicles to obtain fuel.

As tensions between Iran, Israel, and the United States escalated into open warfare, Bangladesh found itself plunged into an energy emergency despite the geographic distance. The country of 175 million people imports roughly 95 percent of its energy, making it almost entirely dependent on global fuel markets.

When the Strait of Hormuz became a battleground, the world’s oil supplies dipped, as the narrow waterway is the gateway for nearly a third of the world’s seaborne oil. Bangladesh felt the squeeze immediately.

A map of the Strait of Hormuz. Image via Wikipedia by Goran_tek-en. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The cascade begins: Supply lines cut

The crisis hit with devastating speed in early March.

QatarEnergy, one of Bangladesh’s three long-term liquified natural gas (LNG) suppliers, suspended deliveries, invoking force majeure, after Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure disrupted production. Qatar accounts for 20 percent of global LNG supply. Within days, the other two suppliers followed suit, cutting off Bangladesh from all contracted deliveries.

Bangladesh had been purchasing spot LNG cargoes at approximately ten dollars per million British thermal units in January. By mid-March, those prices had skyrocketed to USD 28.28 per MMBtu (million metric British thermal units) for emergency purchases.

“We are buying spot LNG at an exorbitant price, which is almost 2.5 times higher than the price of four days ago,” Energy Secretary Saiful Islam told reporters.

This price explosion created a vicious cycle. When Petrobangla floated an initial tender for spot LNG on March 1, it received zero bids. Traders considered Bangladesh’s market too volatile and risky. Only after offering even higher prices did the country secure cargo from Gunvor at USD 28.28 MMBtu and Vitol at USD 23.08 per MMBtu.

“We are now looking for alternatives from the spot market to fill the window left vacant by the three suppliers,” Petrobangla Chairman Md Arfanul Hoque acknowledged.

Bangladesh was scheduled to receive 115 LNG cargoes in 2026. Officials projected losing forty of them due to disruptions in Western Asia.

Who gets the gas?

Power generation and household consumption took precedence over industrial uses. This meant four of five state-run urea fertilizer factories had to shut down for at least fifteen days. Only the Shahjalal Fertilizer Company continued operating, along with one private facility.

Bangladesh was in the middle of the Boro season, when rice paddies require consistent irrigation and fertilization. Government officials insisted there was no immediate crisis due to existing stocks. Farmers and agricultural experts worried about medium-term shortages.

Meanwhile, gas supply to the power sector dropped from 870 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) to 820 mmcfd. Officials warned this reduction would likely increase power load-shedding across the country and could lead to blackouts.

“Until the supply side is fixed, I have to use what I have in my hand in a prudent manner,” Power and Energy Minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood Tuku told reporters. “We must use what we have sparingly. If people cooperate, it will be possible to overcome this crisis.”

Universities closed, fuel rationed

On March 8, authorities announced that all universities would close early, advancing Eid holidays to reduce electricity consumption.

University campuses consume large amounts of power for dormitories, classrooms, laboratories, and air conditioning. Shutting them down offered immediate relief to the strained power grid. Students faced uncertainty about when normal operations would resume.

“We are doing everything we can to reduce consumption and ensure stability in power, fuel, and import supplies,” a senior official from the Ministry of Power, Energy, and Mineral Resources explained.

Simultaneously, the government ordered petrol pumps to reduce daily sales by 10 percent to preserve national fuel reserves. This rationing triggered panic across major cities. Long queues formed at fuel stations as motorists rushed to fill their tanks.

Drivers reported waiting hours to purchase fuel. Some stations ran dry by midday.

The industrial toll

The ready-made garment industry accounts for 84 percent of Bangladesh’s exports and employs millions of workers.

When power cuts doubled to as much as five hours per day, factories faced impossible choices. Industry leaders described a nightmare scenario unfolding since the conflict began in late February. Running diesel generators during extended outages dramatically increased operating costs.

In recent months, many textile and garment factories operated at only 40–50 percent capacity. These production losses threatened export orders.

By early March, diesel reserves had fallen to just nine days of supply, measured at 115,473 tons as of March 4.

The government scrambled to secure emergency shipments. Bangladesh received 5,000 metric tons through a cross-border pipeline from India’s Numaligarh Refinery. Officials were negotiating for an additional 30,000 metric tons from the Indian Oil Corporation.

Household struggles

For ordinary Bangladeshi families, the energy crisis manifested most painfully in rising cooking fuel costs.

The price of a 12.5 kg liquefied petrolium gas (LPG) cylinder, which most households use to operate stoves and burners, surged from Bangladeshi Taka (BDT) 900 to 1,500 (USD 7.3 to 12.2), adding between BTD 500–800 (USD 4–6.5) to monthly household expenses. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is BDT 12,500 per month (approximately USD 101). For low-income families already struggling with inflation, this increase forced painful adjustments. Some families began undercooking meals to conserve gas. Others reverted to traditional fuels like wood and dung.

“The Middle East war has made LPG imports very difficult,” Abdur Razzaq, Managing Director of JMI Group, explained. “Freight costs are rising, shipping routes are uncertain, and traders are becoming cautious.”

Transportation costs for LPG jumped to USD 275 per ton, compared to the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission’s calculation of USD 120 per ton.

“There was no risk of a shortage until March, considering the LPG already imported by the private sector,” Mostafa Kamal, Chairman of Meghna Group of Industries, stated. “Our concern began in April.”

His company was attempting to source LPG from Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and China as alternatives to Middle Eastern suppliers.

A fiscal time bomb: The cost of crisis

Analysts estimated that spot LNG purchases between 2022 and 2024 could cost USD 11 billion. This enormous outlay strained foreign exchange reserves and forced difficult trade-offs across government budgets.

“If the disruption drags on, we’ll have to lean more on costly spot LNG, which will add to our import burden and tighten supplies for power and industry,” an energy ministry official told Reuters, speaking anonymously.

Each month of elevated prices deepens Bangladesh’s vulnerability.

Petrobangla requested additional subsidies from the government to cover the gap between international prices and domestic retail rates. The government’s own fiscal position remained tight, with limited room for increased energy subsidies.

“There is no fuel shortage at this moment. In fact, we have increased fuel supply compared to last year,” Minister Tuku assured recently. However, in early March, he addressed the issue: “If consumption is controlled, we will be able to run March properly. If committed supplies arrive, the pressure will ease.”

Domestic fuel prices remained unchanged for the third consecutive month by absorbing rising import costs through heavy subsidies.

BDT 5,000 crore (50 billion, about USD 407.4 million) was spent on subsidies in March alone, adding to the strain on the budget and further widening the gap with international market prices.

Diesel is being sold under subsidy at BDT 100 (USD 0.82) per liter, while prices of octane remain at BDT 120 (USD 0.98) per litre, while the market price remains at BDT 180 (USD 1.61) and BDT 150.72 (USD 1.22) respectively.

Originally published on Global Voices

Image remix by Abhimanyu Bandyopadhyay. Used with permission.

Bangladesh’s political landscape has drastically changed since the student-led July 2024 rebellion. Thousands of then-ruling Awami League leaders and members have fled the nation since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s removal on August 5, 2024. While Hasina and a number of other high-ranking officials sought political asylum in India, others relocated primarily to the UK and US.

The real challenge for the Awami League (AL) came in May 2025, when Muhammad Yunus-led interim government of Bangladesh banned the party altogether under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Nevertheless, AL has been carrying out its political activities from exile since its ousting, primarily through webinars, while maintaining visibility in Indian media through public remarks and interviews.

One of the most prominent figures among them is former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who departed Bangladesh on the same day as Hasina and is currently living in Kolkata, India, at an undisclosed location. On November 17, 2025, the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICT) sentenced Kamal to death for crimes against humanity linked to the July uprising. The tribunal found him liable alongside former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, citing a systematic “failure to prevent” atrocities and an active role in abetting the violence that defined those weeks. The three-member panel, headed by Justice Golam Mortuza Mozumder, delivered the verdict after finding them guilty on multiple charges and also ordered the state to confiscate all properties owned by Sheikh Hasina and Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and compensate the families of those injured and killed during the July uprising.

After spending nearly nineteen months underground, Kamal has finally decided to speak out. In an in-person interview with Abhimanyu Bandyopadhyay at his private residence, Kamal discusses the legitimacy of the recent parliamentary elections, the possibility of a political dialogue with the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the legal issues that the Awami League leadership is facing, their current stay in India, allegations of state-led violence, and the administration’s role during the July-August protests.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Abhimanyu Bandyopadhyay (AB): The BNP has recently formed a new government after winning the 13th National Parliamentary Elections. Many local and international observers rated this election to be fair. What do you think about the election results?

Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal (AKK): It was a total sham. As per our ground reports, in many places, ballot boxes were being stuffed the night before voting even started. BNP and the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party had received voting slips in advance to manipulate the outcome. How else do you explain Jamaat-e-Islami, a party that on average gets no more than a dozen seats, leaping to 68? The National Citizens Party (NCP) barely had enough public support to win anything, yet even some of their members got “elected” thanks to this fraud. All of this was to make sure Dr. [Muhammad] Yunus ended up as President, no matter the cost.

The Interim government knew very well that if [The Amani League] got to participate in the elections, we would again secure a landslide victory. Take a look at the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI)’s pre-election survey report. It clearly says that 51 percent of the Bangladeshis still favor the Awami League. [Editor’s note: This claim lacks credibility, as no public record exists of such a survey by DGFI.]

That’s the only reason they didn’t let us take part. Otherwise, there is not a single instance in which the Awami League has refused to participate in an election. For now, all I can say is that we will keep an eye on every move made by this new administration.

AB: What do you expect from the current administration, particularly since they refuse to lift the ban on the Awami League?

AKK: It is a deeply regressive stance for any administration claiming to be democratic. This very political party once tried to assassinate Sheikh Hasina in the brutal grenade attack of August 21, 2004. Twenty-four of our leaders, including Ivy Rahman, were killed in that blast. Those wounds haven’t healed yet.

Yet, despite enduring such violence, we never banned the BNP’s political activities. We gave them a political space, which they are now denying us. What did the BNP–Jamaat alliance era bring to Bangladesh except open support for extremism? In 2005, right under their noses, militants carried out a series of bomb blasts across 63 districts. Now, the same political mindset talks about governance while continuing to exclude others? This is absurd.

We expect this government to look at its own history, rethink its choices, and reopen the political space for us. At this point, their biggest task is to stabilize the country. Bangladesh’s law and order have totally collapsed under the interim administration. Citizens no longer feel safe, and the economy is shaky. If they truly wish to govern, they should end the persecution and focus on protecting people and their livelihoods.

AB: Is your party willing to engage in direct talks with the BNP leadership about reconciliation?

AKK: We have always believed that dialogue is the only viable path forward for any democracy. We did not come to power through the barrel of a gun, nor do we seek to hold on to it by any undemocratic means. So, yes, we are definitely willing to engage in talks with them.

But such discussions need a genuinely democratic environment. If the BNP leadership insists on keeping us at arm’s length, honestly, there’s not much more we can do.

AB: The BNP leadership recently stated that proceedings against the Awami League members will continue legally. Are you and your party leaders ready to go to Bangladesh and face these charges in court?

AKK: Our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has always said that she wishes to return and fight these battles through legal means. She has always led from inside Bangladesh, sticking to the rule of law no matter how tough things get. Look at the trial for the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. If she had chosen to, she could have easily set up a fast-track, special tribunal, but she insisted on proceeding under the country’s existing legal framework. The Awami League doesn’t walk away from the battlefield.

It’s hard not to notice what’s happening to our courts right now. The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) Bangladesh was originally established by Bangabandhu (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) to bring the war criminals of the 1971 Bangladesh genocide to justice. Under the Yunus administration, this court has been fundamentally misused. Through a series of arbitrary legal amendments, people who died in entirely different circumstances are being brought under its jurisdiction and described as martyrs. The court itself is illegitimate. There was no war, no genocide here. So how can these cases be framed as war crimes? That said, we remain fully prepared to engage in any legal process. But for that to happen, the judicial system needs reform to restore its independence and neutrality.

AB: You have been sentenced to death by the ICT. Since you said that this court is illegitimate, do you have any plans to send a legal representative to challenge the validity of your conviction and the jurisdiction of this tribunal?

AKK: The structure of this tribunal leaves no room for representation. Unless one appears in person, there is effectively no way to contest proceedings. Once arrested under this system, you will not be able to get out on bail. It is a closed loop designed for a specific outcome. So, we urge the current government to uphold the law and dismantle this kangaroo court. We want the Awami League to be able to return to Bangladesh in a legal way.

AB: You said no genocide happened during the July Revolution. Are you rejecting the allegations of genocide entirely?

AKK: Of course I am. This narrative is entirely a part of that meticulously designed plan orchestrated by Muhammad Yunus and his cronies. Under Bangladeshi law, any incident in which a police officer uses lethal force is subject to a judicial inquiry led by a magistrate. This investigation figures out why the officer took lethal action and what was happening at the time.

When we were in charge, we set up a judicial inquiry commission to investigate all reported killings. This included deaths caused by police, the killing of police personnel, and the deaths of civilians and political activists, irrespective of party affiliation. No individual was granted indemnity. The interim government has done none of this. Instead, they immediately issued an ordinance granting impunity to anyone for the killing of all police officers and all Awami League activists.

AB: The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported that nearly 1,400 people were killed during the 2024 uprising. How can you dismiss a figure documented by an international body of that stature?

The OHCHR reports show there were around 1,400 protest-related deaths during the July 2024 uprising. Fair use.

AKK: You have to look at where these numbers are coming from. Our own findings indicate that approximately 260 people were killed during the uprising in Bangladesh, including police officers, civilians, protesters, and even Awami League activists. Later on, the Health Department under the interim government had said that nearly 600 people were killed during the uprising. Soon, they changed that number to 800 (approximately).

The figure of 1,400 appears to originate from an individual assessment rather than a formally mandated UN inquiry. Under established procedures, any fact-finding report must be authorized by the Human Rights Council and accompanied by an approved budget. This report had neither. It carries no official UN document number. I think the United Nations should look into this matter much more deeply and make a neutral report that includes a proper list of all the people who died during the protests.

AB: You were the home minister during the July protests. Are you taking responsibility for what your government did?

AKK: We are deeply saddened for the people who died during the protests. It is possible that mistakes were made on our side; it is also possible that mistakes were made on theirs, too. That is something open to discussion. If it is proven that we made mistakes, we will definitely take responsibility. But we must also be given the space to present the facts from our side. By mid-July, when the protest shifted from the quota movement to a one-point demand, the level of violence unleashed was beyond explanation.

On August 3, a police officer informed me that the protesters were using weapons that our police had never seen before. Many of the guns were not licensed. In such a moment, if the police shoot back to protect themselves, should that be viewed as an offensive act or an act of self-defense?

I clearly remember toward the end of July, the prime minister personally met family members of those who had died in the protests, expressed her sorrow, and offered financial support. We had said there would be an investigation through legal channels into the killings, but we were not given the opportunity to carry that process through.

AB: You are making a very serious charge, Mr. Khan. Are you claiming that thousands of ordinary students and the general public who took to the streets during July were all carrying prohibited, high-caliber weapons?

Several videos showed Awami League activists carrying lethal firearms during the July-August protests. Screenshots from videos widely circulated on social media. Fair use.

AKK: I did not refer to the ordinary students or the general public. What I meant to say was that among a section of the protesters, there were militants involved.

See, we understand that many of the young people who came out in July genuinely sought reform. They have been tragically exploited for specific political interests. To expand the list in the so-called July martyrs’ gazette, the interim administration even included the names of those miscreants who were killed in police firing while attacking our officers, looting police stations, outposts, and armories, and setting them ablaze. The list also includes those killed in security force firing while attempting to escape from prison or during attacks on prisons. The list also includes those who died in fires they started while looting and burning homes and businesses of Awami League leaders and activists.

AB: During the protests, several unarmed civilians were killed by sniper fire, with shots reportedly aimed at the forehead. Did your administration allow the use of snipers?

AKK: Our police have around fifty sniper rifles, all of which came from the United States for counterterrorism operations. They were locked up during the protests and stayed locked even on the day we departed. The army has a few sniper rifles as well, but those were not in use at that time either. Brigadier Sakhawat Hossain has confirmed that theirs too remained locked. We simply do not know where the sniper rifles came from and who these marksmen were, but their presence indicates outsider involvement with an intent to foment violence and create instability across Bangladesh.

AB: So no shots were fired at protesters from helicopters?

AKK: Our helicopters are too small to carry out targeted firing; at most, random fire would be possible. During the protests, sound grenades were dropped from helicopters to create loud blasts and clear the ground below.

AB: But according to leaked audio verified by the BBC, Sheikh Hasina had ordered the use of lethal force against the protesters.

AKK: That is an incomplete reading of the situation. The prime minister’s instruction was directed at armed militants, not at unarmed civilians or peaceful demonstrators. In Bangladesh, the police follow a set of rules when dealing with protests. First, they give warnings. Then move to physical restraint if necessary. If that fails, they may use tear gas and rubber bullets. Live ammunition is considered only in extreme circumstances, when there is serious destruction of public property, loss of life, or direct attacks on law enforcement. In such an extreme situation, even a regular constable has the legal standing to defend his life if no one is in charge. During our time in government, the police were granted operational authority, but they were also kept under strict supervision. Our police would not have dared to fire on anybody without a good reason.

The International Crimes Tribunal-2 on Monday began hearing charges of crimes against humanity against former…

Read more- https://t.co/Yp8jirbQUQ pic.twitter.com/Yvo2shE59t

— New Age (@NewAgeBDcom) July 29, 2025

AB: What would you say about the death of Abu Sayeed? Footage shows that he was an unarmed protester holding a stick; however, the police shot him several times. Were they ordered to forget those “rules” at that time? 

AKK: [Hesitates] Thank you, next question, please.

AB: How long do you plan to stay in India? Have you thought about leaving for another country?

AKK: We are deeply grateful to the Indian government for the way it has welcomed us and offered us shelter. No other country could have offered us a safer refuge than India.

AB: BNP’s General Secretary Mirza Fakhrul said that Sheikh Hasina won’t be a problem for India-Bangladesh relations. If ties deepen in the future between the BNP-led government and New Delhi, could that create difficulties for members of the Awami League currently taking refuge in India?

AKK: I think this is something we can only wait and see about. We cannot say for sure what will happen. But one thing is certain: India is our friend, and they have always helped the Awami League. I think they will keep supporting us no matter what happens.

AB: You have alleged many times that your removal from power was a conspiracy orchestrated by the American deep state. But the Indian government maintains very close relations with the United States and is often seen as aligned with it. Does that put you in a potentially difficult position?

AKK: I do not want to comment on what the Indian government does. What I can say is that India has been a friend to us. In moments of crisis, they have stood by us and have assured us of their continued support. That is all that matters to us.

Youth from colleges and universities led the July revolution protests in Dhaka. Image via Pexels by Mojahid Mottakin. Used under a Pexels License.

AB: As Bangladesh’s largest political party, how do you believe the Awami League can re-enter the country’s political landscape?

AKK: At this moment in Bangladesh, even mentioning the Awami League can lead to imprisonment. We have seen a Deputy Inspector General (DIG) in Rajshahi publicly issue a letter stating that any of our members who manage to get bail would be arrested again under new charges. It is hard to imagine such a statement being made without instructions from higher authorities.

We were fortunate to escape with our lives, but for those who have been detained, the conditions are unthinkable. Around 120 of our MPs are currently in prison. Information reaching me suggests that, across the country, a large proportion of detainees are Awami League activists and supporters. We are getting reports of physical assaults in custody and of prisoners being denied proper medical treatment. So, without changes to the judiciary, it will be difficult for us to return. Even in the Liberation War [1971], we didn’t see this much inhuman treatment of us. If this continues, the people of Bangladesh will not remain silent. I believe it is ultimately our grassroots workers and supporters who will bring the party back to the country.

AB: If you were to return to Bangladesh and eventually assume power again, what approach would you take toward the leaders of the July uprising?

AKK: First, we want to express our sincere regret for those killed or injured during the July protests. Any future government led by us would initiate a thorough and independent investigation into why these events unfolded the way they did, who orchestrated them, what their intentions were, and what forces were at play.

At the same time, we are prepared to examine our own errors. We need to understand whether any misjudgments on our part contributed to the unrest, and who may have been responsible for misleading the public during that period. All of this will be done transparently, through democratic and accountable processes. People deserve to know the truth.

Originally published on Global Voices

A roadside campaign stall covered with large candidate banners, party iconography (a rice-stalk motif), and rows of photocopied flyers. Used as a representative image illustrating how printed and synthetic visuals populate the civic landscape in the lead-up to the 2026 Bangladesh general election. Photo by the author. Used with permission.

This post is part of Global Voices’ April 2026 Spotlight series, “Human perspectives on AI.” This series will offer insight into how AI is being used in global majority countries, how its use and implementation are affecting individual communities, what this AI experiment might mean for future generations, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

A photograph began circulating across Bangladeshi social media on December 14, 2025, that would majorly influence the national election on February 12 — the first election since the July 2024 student-mass uprising toppled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government. The high-stakes vote was considered a penultimate test of whether Bangladesh could rebuild and realize its hopes for a free and fair democracy following the uprising.

The image showed Shadik Kayem, 27th Vice-President of Dhaka University Central Students’ Union, sitting across a small table from another man, apparently sharing tea in what looked like a casual meeting between acquaintances. The timing made the photograph explosive: just three days earlier, Osman Hadi, the coordinator of Inqilab Moncho (Revolution Platform), a cultural organization formed by people associated with the July 2024 student-mass uprising, had been shot in Dhaka, triggering immediate political controversy about who orchestrated the attack.

The man sitting with Kayem in the photograph was allegedly Hadi’s shooter.

However, all was not as it appeared. The fact-checking organization FactWatch determined that this photograph was fake and had been generated using artificial intelligence (AI).

Welcome to Bangladesh’s first AI-saturated election, where seeing was no longer believing.

The scale of synthetic reality

Between December 2025 and February 2026, as Bangladesh prepared for its national elections on February 12, a study identified 72 cases in which AI-manipulated content, specifically designed to manufacture false narratives and shape electoral outcomes, gained significant momentum online. This study reviewed fact-checks on AI-generated content targeting political parties, political figures, and the electoral process to understand how these false narratives were being leveraged.

Infographic by the author. Used with permission.

Nearly half of all AI-generated content involved claims of false activities and statements. Forty-nine percent of AI manipulations created entirely fictional realities about what political leaders were doing, saying, or experiencing during the campaign.

Twenty-eight percent of cases deployed AI to create false statement attributions — putting specific words into the mouths of political figures through AI-edited photocards mimicking trustworthy media outlets.

The dominant AI tactic involved generating synthetic images of political figures in false contexts. AI-generated photographs showed newly elected Prime Minister Tarique Rahman digging in a field with a spade alongside a constituent during supposed campaign activities. Synthetic images showed him shaking hands with children at events he never attended. Each manipulation created false impressions about his campaign, his priorities, and his public persona.

AI-generated images and videos also circulated showing his mother, Khaleda Zia (the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1991 to 1996 and 2001 to 2006) walking, claiming the seventy-six-year-old BNP chairperson was moving freely despite known serious health conditions. Additional AI content about Khaleda Zia addressed strategic questions about her political capability, potentially affecting BNP’s electoral prospects.

Meanwhile, despite being banned from participating in the election, the previous ruling party, Awami League, remained a target for AI manipulation. Deepfake videos showed former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina making statements from her exile in India that she never actually made. Additional AI video manipulations attempted to create impressions that she maintained governmental authority despite her exile, serving narratives that the election lacked legitimacy without Awami League participation.

Perhaps most audacious, an AI-generated video appeared showing former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad endorsing Hasina as Bangladesh’s legitimate leader. The deepfake leveraged international authority to support the Awami League’s exile position. Mahathir never made such statements. The video was entirely synthetic.

Falsified photocards

Political actors exploited this fragmented media landscape by creating or editing photocards (graphic news cards) that appeared to originate from established outlets like Somoy TV, Channel i, Jugantor, or Kaler Kantho.

False quotes attributed to the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party candidate Syed Abdullah Muhammad Taher appeared in fabricated Somoy TV photocards. Channel i photocards surfaced with similarly altered quotes from the same Jamaat leader.

When voters saw inflammatory quotes appearing across several trusted media brands, the multi-source validation made the fabricated quotes more credible than isolated false claims.

Edited photocards supposedly from the news site Barta Bazar about the Jamaat in Mirpur propagated hyper-specific, false narratives targeting particular constituencies.

Fact checkers encountered twenty separate cases involving AI-edited fake quotes. When photocards showed National Citizen Party chairperson Nahid Islam making incendiary comments, the manipulation used media brand logos to add credibility to the fabrications.

Additional modified photocards targeting political personalities demonstrated the systematic nature of this strategy across several parties and candidates.

The Osman Hadi falsehood

Three days after Inqilab Mancha coordinator Osman Hadi was shot on December 11, political actors began weaponizing his tragedy. AI-generated images claimed to show Hadi opening his eyes in his hospital bed, manipulating the public’s desperate hope for his recovery. The fabricated photographs spread rapidly across social media, each share intensifying a manufactured moment that his family and doctors could only contradict with denials — denials that were never as compelling as emotional, visual “proof.”

The incident didn’t die down. As February’s election neared, altered photocards using Barta Bazar’s name emerged, falsely claiming that the Jamaat-e-Islami party had sponsored the attack. Opponents fabricated evidence of Jamaat’s involvement, potentially swaying uncertain voters. This exploitation continued months after the shooting.

A rise in conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories that once circulated as whispered speculation gained sudden credibility when an onslaught of AI-manufactured proof emerged to support them. An image appeared, claiming to document a secret meeting in Delhi between Bangladeshi activist Pinaki Bhattacharya, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, and politician Krishna Nandi. The synthetic image transformed unproven theories about foreign interference into apparent visual documentation. No such meeting happened. The image was entirely artificial.

Meanwhile, AI-generated images claimed to show Awami League protest marches in Bhola, suggesting the banned party could still gather supporters despite legal prohibitions. Fabricated images of Jamaat assemblies served dual purposes — either demonstrating overwhelming popular support or raising alarms about dangerous Islamist mobilization, depending on which narrative benefited the circulator. Additional synthetic images depicting massive political support and gatherings were released to reinforce these narratives.

The war between parties

Examining who attacked whom reveals the election’s underlying dynamics. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) absorbed the heaviest assault, with forty-seven cases targeting the party that would ultimately secure a landslide victory. Opponents clearly identified BNP as the threat requiring maximum firepower.

Jamaat-e-Islami confronted thirteen separate AI attacks. Edited photocards spread fabricated quotes from Jamaat figures, often questioning the party’s Islamic credentials or exploiting religious themes. When hackers compromised a Jamaat leader’s account and attributed false comments to him, the attack merged traditional cybersecurity breaches with AI-amplified distribution.

The Awami League persisted relevant enough from exile to warrant six counter-campaigns. Deepfake videos featuring Sheikh Hasina and fabricated photocards sought to challenge whatever legitimacy claims the banned party maintained.

The National Citizen Party’s youth leadership was targeted through multiple edited photocards that falsely attributed statements to convener Nahid Islam. Opponents sought to influence younger voters who’d participated in the July Uprising by releasing heavily edited images with inflammatory language, attributing them to Nahid Islam, attempting to alienate the very constituency that elevated NCP into relevance.

Another AI-generated video circulated, claiming to show police releasing election survey results, fabricating official statements about electoral prospects. The manipulation attempted to shape voter expectations. Edited photocards showed fabricated interactions between political figures, creating entirely fictional political relationships designed to confuse voters about actual coalition dynamics. AI-generated videos even purported to show Tarique Rahman asking for money during campaigning, suggesting vote-buying or financial corruption. The volume alone overwhelmed fact-checking capacity.

Blueprint for regional democracy

What happened in Bangladesh’s 2026 election represents something categorically different, wherein AI overhauled the political battlefield.

Bangladesh’s experience provides the first comprehensive documentation of AI weaponization in South Asian electoral democracy. India faces elections regularly. Pakistan’s political landscape remains volatile. Nepal and Sri Lanka conduct their own democratic processes. All now face the prospect of similar AI-driven misinformation campaigns.

The patterns documented here: temporal escalation toward election day, deployment of synthetic images and edited photocards, exploitation of sensitive political events, all represent tactical knowledge that political operatives throughout the region are certainly studying.