Law and Democracy Network: Bangladesh - Democracy and Its Discontents

In the summer of 2024, student protests for the reform of the quota system in Bangladesh eskalated into a mass uprising against the Awami League government, resulting in the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The autocratic regime of Ms Hasina has been succeeded by a caretaker government led by the Nobel laureate economist Dr Muhammad Yunus, and a Constitutional Reforms Commission has also been set up. As Bangladesh prepares for constitutional change in this moment of interregnum, we ask:

Is this a new constituent moment for Bangladesh? How does the country relate today with its founding in 1971?

Did the people resist the Awami League as a party in power, or the authoritarian image of its leader Ms Hasina? In the global age of populism, what does it mean to have Dr Yunus, a technocratic expert to oversee Bangladesh’s transition to constitutional democracy?

What role do political parties play in Bangladeshi state and society? Going forward, will militant democracy be an appropriate constitutional model for Bangladesh?

Can Islamist formations be integrated in electoral politics? How will this affect Bangladesh’s founding commitment to secularism and minority rights?

Professor Naveeda Khan is a professor in the Department of Anthropology. She received her BA in History from Vassar College, her MA in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research and her PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. She has also worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Dhaka and Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Travelers and Immigrants Aid of Chicago (TIA) and The Field Museum of Natural History.

Professor Ridwanul Hoque is a professor of Law at the University of Dhaka and a University Fellow at Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, Australia. He earlier taught at the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh. He has studied law at the Universities of Chittagong, Cambridge, and London for, respectively, LLB, LLM, and PhD. Professor Hoque has held visiting research and teaching positions at Cornell Law School, Melbourne Law School, La Trobe University, and National Law University, Delhi. He specialises in Bangladeshi and South Asian constitutional laws. He has acted as an expert in several SIAC cases in the UK involving citizenship-deprivation orders by the SSHD. As a foreign law expert, he has also written expert reports for the US and Australian courts. He has an extensive experience of consultancy in the areas of children’s rights, labour migration, and human trafficking. He is the author of Judicial Activism in Bangladesh: A Golden Mean Approach (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). His latest publication is a co-edited volume — Constitutional Foundings in South Asia (Hart Publishing, 2021).

Ms Sara Hossain is a barrister who has been practicing at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh for over 25 years, and currently Deputy Head of Chambers at the law firm of Dr Kamal Hossain and Associates, focusing on the areas of constitutional law, public interest law, and family law. She serves pro bono as the Honorary Executive Director of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST). She has been involved in public interest and human rights case on torture, freedom of expression, women’s rights and forced evictions. She earlier worked on the South Asia Programmes of INTERIGHTS, supporting human rights litigation before national and international courts, and judicial dialogues on the domestic application of human rights. She has written on judicial independence, freedom of expression and honour crimes.  She served on the UN Group of Experts on Accountability in North Korea, and as a member of a UN Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and is currently on the Board of the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.