Bangladesh: Civil society consultation on follow-up to the initial review

Informal civil society consultation to enhance implementation of Human Rights Committee's recommendations at the national level

Informal civil society consultation, October 2018

Bangladesh was reviewed by the HR Committee, for the first time, in March 2017. In its Concluding Observations, the HR Committee requested Bangladesh to provide information, by March 2018, about the implementation of three specific recommendations of the Committee, namely on: early marriage and harmful traditional practices; extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances; and torture and ill-treatment. Up to date, such information i.e. State follow-up report is not submitted by Bangladesh, preventing HR Committee to carry out its follow-up procedure on the country.

Against this background, 20 representatives from various civil society organisations and HRDs gathered for an informal consultation, sharing current status of the issues at stake and implementation of Committee's recommendations and discussing how to enhance the concrete actions from the national authority to address issues. One of the ways identified at the consutlation was to utilise opportunities of the reviews by other UN HR bodies, such as CAT, in order to address human rights issues in the country more comprehensively and highlight the crucial lack of actions by State authority.

Partiicpants agreed to continue working together.