SOME months ago, recommendations came to the government from a conference on ensuring the birth certificates of bridegrooms and brides during the marriage registration. The suggested minimum age of marriage as proposed for men is 23 and brides must be 18 years of age. Earlier, a similar conference was organized by two more NGOs. The [...]

In Bangladesh, 12,000 women die needlessly every year as a result of the complications of pregnancy and childbirth. We have the knowledge and technology to prevent most of these deaths. Progress has been made in reducing maternal deaths in Bangladesh, but it needs to be faster and it needs to benefit more poor people.
2007 marks [...]

Forming a unified front with simple but yet effective tools, an army of women villagers and housewives is taking the lead in the fight against the global tuberculosis epidemic in the South Asian nation of Bangladesh, The New York Times reported on Thursday, April 5.
“I am convinced that this largely contributes to the high cure [...]

At 15 Jolly was preparing for her SSC exams. She never set for the tests. The teenager instead was married off to become a houswife. Although her parents boast of having a rich son-in-law, they have never tried to know whether their daughter is at all happy with a husband double her age.
“I feel ashamed [...]

The Rajshahi unit of Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association on Monday formed a human chain at Shaheb Bazar in the city demanding proper investigation into the murder of housewife Nurunnahar Runa.
The association also demanded punishment for the killers of Runa. Dil Setara Chuni, coordinator of the association’s Rajshahi division unit, lawyer Nasrin Rahman, Sayra Begum, [...]

Home Affairs Adviser Maj Gen (retd) MA Matin Tuesday urged all to join the fight against human smuggling, as some 50 Bangladeshi girls are lured out to India everyday and coerced into prostitution, reports UNB.
“Organised criminals earn billions of dollars by trading human beings like merchandise, and it’s the high time that we bring an [...]

Hundreds of sex workers have taken to the streets of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, to celebrate a ruling that legalised prostitution.
 
But the ruling by a lower court has now been suspended by the Bangladesh Supreme Court, which is also considering whether it will hear an appeal by the government against the ruling.
The law minister said [...]

ICDDR,B focuses on the lives of women in Bangladesh and around the world for a simple reason: gender equality and the wellbeing of families go hand in hand. When women are empowered to live full and productive lives, their families prosper. Working to achieve Millennium Development Goal 3 – promoting gender equality and empowering women [...]

The Supreme Court Monday asked the Indian government to examine the feasibility of having a stringent penal law akin to the one in Bangladesh to deal with cases of women and young girls being attacked with acid. A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan also asked the government to examine the feasibility of regulating the [...]

A widow – a woman whose husband is no more. Losing a family member, particularly the life partner, is the worst tragedy that can happen in one’s life. But societal practices and exclusion darken a widow’s life even further. The social practices surrounding widowhood in the Indian Sub-Continent show a cross-cultural uniformity. In every culture [...]

Despite initiatives and interventions undertaken at national and international levels, maternal health is still neglected in Bangladesh, and the maternal mortality ratio remains one of the highest in the world. In order to improve rural women’s access to maternity care, in 1996 the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) instituted services for birthing women in 21 [...]

Daulatdia, in Bangladesh, is one of the largest brothels in the world - a village of 1,600 women who sell sex to 3,000 men every day. As Claudia Hammond found, it is a punishing place that few will ever leave
Arriving at the port of Goalundo Ghat, you would never guess that it houses a brothel [...]

Justice Habibur Rahman tells Karmojibi Nari confce.
An improved situation, where all men and women can have the taste of creative and participatory democracy, gradually appears to be far reachable, said Justice Muhammad Habibur Rahman, former chief adviser to a caretaker government, yesterday.  “It requires further thinking whether the decision on an issue of conflict should [...]

 Court in Bangladesh has handed down death sentences to three young men in connection with
the murder of a school girl.  

 
  The act of these young men led to the innocent school girl’s death, so
  they were guilty of murdering the girl  
 
 

  Judge Anwar Hossain  

A trial court in Gaibandha district on Monday [...]