Political & Economic context
Sheikh Hasina became prime minister of Bangladesh in 2009.
Corruption is embedded in every level of Bangladeshi society. In 2012, about USD 13 million was poured into the country by donors. While public financial management needs strengthening, transparency should be promoted as well as accountability and good governance. Despite the Paris Declaration principles calling for greater country ownership and the use of country systems to implement aid-funded activities. A Joint Cooperation Strategy was signed by 18 development partners in Bangladesh underscored this commitment. In 2012, the World Bank faced problems and concluded that adequate fiduciary safeguards to ensure that aid resources are used for the intended purposes were lacking. This ended in a conflict between the World Bank and the Bangladeshi government, which was followed by Sheikh Hasina’s decision in July 2012 to build the Padma bridge with the country's own funds. This estimated budget for this mega project was 23,000 crore Taka (one crore is 10 million Taka).
Impunity and poor access to justice in lower courts for the poor, women and minorities are common. “People are not satisfied with the politicians,” microcredit pioneer, Professor and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has said.
Protest marches were organised by religious faithful against a US film and cartoon deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad, for example: demonstrations could often reach crowds of 6000 or more. A massive rally in April 2013 by an organization based on Sunni Muslim ideology demanded capital punishment for 'atheist bloggers' and leaders of Hefajat-e Islam. New elections were held on January 5, 2014.
Economy
The Bangladeshi government promotes the employment of Bangladeshi workers abroad. More than USD 1 billion was remitted from abroad by Bangladeshi migrant workers every month in 2012 and the government therefore regards human resources as an important source of income for the country.
Industrial export products are ready-made garments, leather, pharmaceuticals, jute and ceramics. Agriculture accounts for 60% of the work done in rural areas, where many workers are small traders: flowers, vegetables, fish, meat, transport. There is internal migration from rural to urban areas, mainly involving men moving to work as service providers such as construction workers, rickshaw pullers, etc. Women have less access to money, markets, training, networks and policy- and decision-making. However, the importance of the work of women cannot be underestimated. Furthermore, World Bank data showed that the proportion of women in the labor force increased between 2011 and 2016 (from 31% to 33%).
Corporate Social Responsibility funds by banks, textile factories and so on for development and poverty reduction are not very common. An element of Islamic tradition is the concept of Zikat and most factories organize medical care for their workers and provide free transport and daily meals, and sometimes free sanitary napkins for female workers.
Food Security
Food security doesn’t exist in Bangladesh: formalin is used to preserve milk; DDT is used to preserve dried fish; calcium carbide, copper sulphate and other chemicals are used to ripen fruits artificially; and hormones are used to fatten cows, poultry and fish. There is no governmental quality control. This is a severe threat to people’s health, especially for children and the elderly.
Bangladesh has one of the world’s highest prevalence rates of malnutrition in children under five; 47% of children experience chronic malnutrition and 40% are underweight. Stunting is also widespread.
Rohingya settlements
In 2004, approximately 2 lakh (1 lakh = 100,000) Rohingyas were living illegally in the region of Cox’s Bazar. In 2012, however, Bangladesh officially accommodated around 29,000 Rohingya refugees. Various estimates suggest that the number of Myanmarese minorities living in and around Cox’s Bazar is between 2.5 and 5 lakh. According to locals, this number has risen as illegal immigration remains almost unchallenged along the coastal borders.
Education
The situation at higher education institutes in Bangladesh was rather diverse at that time. Many private universities are mushrooming. The Government Universities offer limited access for free to mostly brilliant students. These universities are also highly politicized, as the regular violations, conflicts and battles show: see pictures. The 2010 literacy survey shows that nearly 42% of the people aged 7 and above are illiterate. However the literacy level is much higher 78,6% for the age group 15-24. In terms of tertiary education attainment Bangladesh lags behind India and Pakistan. Proportion of population 15+ receiving vocational training of 1,38% is quite low. This while the education indicator is important for human capital formation.
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR)
Bangladesh had in that time 5 medical college hospitals, 59 district hospitals, 132 upazila health complexes, 70 mother and child welfare centres and union health centres across the country. In general Bangladesh had a very poor public health situation. The allocation for the health sector 2013-2014 was only 4,26 percent of the budget (1,49 percent increase), the lowest in a decade. 60% of the health costs were out of pocket and rich people often went abroad for treatments. Much health money was spent on salaries and the prices of many essential medicines had gone up.
There was a shortage of beds in government hospitals, no health care insurances existed, a lack of social safety nets (disabled people had to seek for alms in the streets), shortage of nurses and specialist doctors (8000 in 2012) in particular in the rural areas resulted in poor medical services and unhygienic environments. The needed doctors didn't want to live in remote areas because of lack of facilities and preferred to work even abroad such as in Oman and the Arab Emirates. The existence of many private hospitals and a strong competition around these hospitals by middle men, offering better treatments in private clinics, created an unhealthy competition. An example of a government hospital is the Chittagong General Hospital: this hospital with 250 beds was in 2012 running with the same manpower it had in 1987 with 80 beds. There were 21 doctors out of a total 91 staff members, barely enough to provide proper treatment to healthcare seekers. Out of the remaining 70 staff, 43 were nurses, a far cry from the standards of the World Health Organization, which states that 3 nurses and 5 paramedics are required against each doctor.
According to the Population Census 2011 the population was 142 million, whereas the UNFPA reported 148 million. The population growth rate in the country has fallen to 1,34%. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has declined from nearly 7 in 1970 children per woman to 2,3 by the end of 2010. Drastic fall in TFR was also reflected in declining household size to 4.4 in 2011. Nevertheless Bangladesh was and still is, one of the densely populated countries in the world.
Despite the miserable public health situation the country reduced maternal mortality (1 in 500 births), child mortality, and ensured safe birth of babies in the rural areas, 32% deliveries were attended by skilled birth attendants (one of the main targets of the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 by 2015) and improved family planning tremendously. The consequences were that more children stayed alive and less babies were born. There had been an increase in community clinics (the plan was to launch 18.000), a desire of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Earlier a family used to get a door-to-door visit by a Family Welfare Assistant (FWA) every two months. She disseminated contraceptives and information to families. Because women became more mobile, a FWA could be present in a community clinic for three days a week and reduced her home visits.
Dutch-Bangladeshi cooperation
On July 9 , 2012 The Daily Star reported at page 2:
“The Netherlands listed Bangladesh as one of the top 15 countries where it would provide cooperation and assistance on priority basis for the expansion of the emerging economies. “Our support to Bangladesh will be in the fields of water management, food security, food safety, environment, climate change and higher education,” said outgoing Netherlands ambassador to Bangladesh Alphons Hennekens. The journalist or the ambassador forgot to mention Women’ s empowerment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. The article continued: “...the president stressed the need to exchange more trade and investment between Bangladesh and the Netherlands to increase commerce relations.”
In 2011 State Secretary Ben Knapen (CDA) decided to focus on the following three main themes for Development Cooperation:
- Food security and Food Safety, Good Governance was phased out
- Water Management, WASH would be phased out
- Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.
For more information on (some of) these topics, check out our Bangladesh topics timeline.
The Health programme was almost phased out. Also the Education programme was phased out within two years. The Underprivileged Children Education Project was a very successful flagship project, see clip....
The new motto for Development Cooperation in the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands’ (EKN) multi annual strategic plan 20.. was ‘from aid to trade’. Each programme implemented links with the private sector. Under the SRHR programme for instance the Nirapod programme under the leadership of Marie Stopes Bangladesh introduced a Private Sector Engagement Plan. The Ritu programme developed low cost biodegradable sanitary napkins and SNV conducted a programme Working with Women in 10 different textile factories. If you want to read more about textiles, check out our topics timeline.
Embassy struggles
During this time a number of circumstances constrained the Dutch-Bangladeshi cooperation:
- Political turmoil: Blockades, regular ‘hartals’, among Awami League
and the opposition Bangladesh National Party as a run to the national elections on 5 January 2014, and the verdicts delivered in six war crimes cases, the International Crimes Tribunal (started 2009) and seven other cases were under trial. - Industrial disasters, such as the Rana Plaza collapse in April 2013, see NICC clip with interview Pieter Marres.
- Religious violations by extremists such as the murder of Cesare Tavella in Gulshan, Dhaka, around 6 pm October 2015, teamleader of a Food Security project under ICCO, financed by the Dutch Embassy. Also two Nuffic project workers were brutally killed in April 2016.
- Extreme Climate (excessive heat, humidity, rainfall), pollution of air in particular in Dhaka, and no food security and toxic fruit and vegetables. Also the health care facilities were unreliable.
Due to these circumstances it became difficult for the Ministry’s Human Resources department to recruit Embassy staff. After the terrorist attack on Holy’s bakery in Gulshan, behind the Dutch Club, in 2015 the Ministry of FA decided that Embassy staff wasn’t allowed to walk in the streets and/or take a rickshaw anymore. Also visits to any restaurant were forbidden. The Ministry reduced the posting from four to three years. The increasingly unpredictable security situation impacted EKN’s public activities, such as launching events, networking and public closing ceremonies.
Food Security and Food Safety
The EKN Food security programme in Bangladesh started in 2011.
One of the programmes was Access to markets to women entrepreneurs, a programme by EKN carried out by Action Aid.
Water
The Netherlands and Bangladesh have cooperated on water management (IWRM) since the 1960s and on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) since the 1970s. Albeit very differently, both countries are Delta countries. Important NL-supported water programs during this time include for example the start of the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 (BDP2100), the Char Development and Settlement Project IV (CDSP IV) and the Blue Gold Program. Between 2011 and 2016 NL focused more on IWRM than WASH. If you want to know more, check out these different topics on our topic timeline: BDP2100, CDSP, and Water.
Education
Nuffic (a Dutch organization for internationalisation in education) initiated many useful projects. To mention a few:
Nuffic introduced the NICHE programme, which supported the three focus areas of the Development cooperation programme of EKN: water, SRHR and Food Security.
MDF (Management for Development Foundation), which has a local office in Sri Lanka, decided in these years to open an office in Dhaka.
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR)
With help of donors, the UN family and private funds such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the government implemented several National Health Population Nutrition Sector Development Plans (HPNSDP). EKN also supported this and participated in the donor coordination group on Health, administered by the World Bank. Its annual contribution was 6 and later 7 million Euro.
Since 2011 development cooperation in the health sector was concentrated on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs developed a Theory of Change for SRHR which had as mission: to protect, promote and fulfil universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, including HIV/AIDS. The four result areas were the following:
- Better information and greater freedom of choice for young people about their sexuality
- Improved access to contraceptives and medicines
- Better public and private health care for family planning, pregnancies and childbirth including safe abortions
- More respect for the sexual and reproductive rights of groups who are currently denied these rights
Because of the sensitivity around this subject in Bangladesh a diplomatic approach was needed for its implementation. An important issue for instance was comprehensive sexuality education (CSE). The EKN initiated two CSE projects, Unite for Body Rights, implemented by Rutgers Foundation and Generation Breakthrough, implemented by UNFPA. Interestingly the Government of Bangladesh, in particular the Minister of Education, incorporated in 2012 the issues reproductive health, HIV, gender, and human rights in the national textbook curriculum, despite the fact that teachers feel shy to discuss these issues in the classroom. Therefore the Rutgers Foundation developed successfully a curriculum and an attractive methodology, it trained local Master-trainers who taught teachers how to talk about SRHR issues and how to present sensitive and taboo topics to students and their parents.
Another important issue was Child Marriage. While a marriage for a girl under 18 was forbidden by law no enforcement took place. This caused dropout among school going girls and unwanted pregnancies at an early age. UNICEF lobbied strongly to reduce Child Marriage in Bangladesh while RedOrange and Terre des Hommes NL started, with financial EKN support, the project Initiatives for Married Adolescents Girls’ Empowerment (IMAGE) (see Image for Change, with 7 short clips about the lives of early married girls).
Also Menstruation was an important topic that asked for attention, among others because it is highly linked to school dropout of girls. It became clear that in 40% of the public schools no proper toilets for girls were available. Therefore EKN financed the Ritu (Menstruation in Bangla) project, carried out by Simavi and RedOrange at the local as well as the national level, and supported the development of low cost biodegradable sanitary napkins by TNO to be produced in Bangladesh.
Induced abortion is illegal in Bangladesh except when performed to save a woman’ s life. However, menstrual regulation (MR) procedures are permissible in order to induce menstruation among women who think they may be pregnant. Government-approved MR providers can perform the procedure up to 10 weeks after a missed period, using a MR medication regimen or surgical procedures. The EKN supported programme Nirapod carried out by Marie Stopes Bangladesh aimed to save women from unwanted pregnancies and unsafe MR. The programme worked closely with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and improved facilities in Government hospitals and offered training to health service providers.
Better information on SRHR for young people: EKN organised in 2014 together with the Asian University for Women in Chittagong the first public workshop on SRHR to raise awareness about SRHR among a wider audience. The second workshop was an element of the programme of the International Urban Health conference in 2015 in Dhaka and the third was in 2016, a two day Festival in cooperation between UNICEF, UNFPA, the Embassy of Sweden and EKN and was a successful knowledge and cultural event in Bangla Academy what was visited by about 7000 mainly young people.
Subsidy programmes: While the Embassy got its own budget for development programs, also the ministry of Foreign Affairs, DSO/DA, spent development money in Bangladesh through Dutch and International civil society organizations. For example the Link Up programme was financed by the ministry and carried out under responsibility of the International AIDS Alliance (IAA) in London. The HER project, coordinated by Business and Social Responsibility (BSR) promoted women empowerment in the textiles industries. It was active in 70 - 80 factories and focused on SRHR, Gender Based Violence (GBV), nutrition and nurse training.
To make SRHR information permanently accessible to a wide audience the network ShareNet International was established, financed and monitored by the Head Quarter and carried out by KIT. Three country hubs were established and one of these is Bangladesh, with RedOrange as the secretariat. See Share-Net Bangladesh. It is a network that promotes knowledge sharing, -development, -dissemination and networking.
Violence against women (VAW) and Gender Based Violence
Before 2011 EKN supported a long time an NGO that fought against Acid throwing. In a patriarchal society like Bangladesh a woman was (and still is) submissive to her husband and his family and had to obey these. In traditional families women bring a dowry to the in-law family and that causes very often conflicts resulting in domestic violence.
Fatwa-related, a so-called religious edict, crimes still persist mainly in remote areas of the country, where local influential community members use their power to exploit and punish the poor and helpless, very often illiterate women. The cases are also often related to domestic violence and dowry.
Women's empowerment
EKN had a special Women’s empowerment programme and supported until 2011 several women’ s organizations such as Bangladesh Mahila Parishad which encouraged women’s financial independence. Women have less access to money, market, training, network and policy making.
A local gender specialist, Tapati Das, was appointed at EKN, who retired in 2011. She implemented among others, the Schokland programme on Violence against Women under Minister Bert Koenders.
Foreign minister Dipu Moni supported women’s empowerment by attending public discussions on “Women Leadership” for instance. She emphasized bringing “informal business women” into the formal sector where they could have access to state institutions and public services. The Food Security programme took that up.
In 2013 it could be concluded that women have a larger share in Bangladesh’ economic growth, in particular because of their work in the garment industries, they are the motor of the economy.
More girls enrol in education, however fewer girls complete their schooling and the dropout rates among girls are very high. Girls marry at a very young age, more than 60% are under 18 years. The health and education of a girl are threatened when she is married off at a young age and worse if that leads to early pregnancy, contributing to the rise of premature births. EKN started a programme Initiatives for Married Adolescents Girls’ Empowerment (IMAGE) (see Image for Change, with 7 short clips about the lives of early married girls).
Domestic violence gets specific attention from EKN. It supports the national committee We Can Campaign of which Sultana Kamal is chairperson. She blamed the state and law enforcement agencies for a lack of monitoring and initiatives to ensure protection of women, even though a domestic violence act was passed in 2010. A lack of awareness among the people about the fact that domestic violence is unacceptable causes the practices of it. EKN supported a programme Growing up Safe and Healthy (SAFE) and the programme continued later under the name Shokhi (friend) and was executed in several Dhaka slums, where We Can created awareness and reduced violence against women, among others.
For more about gender, check out this bullet on our topic timeline.
