On 5 August 2024, Sheikh Hasina resigned as prime minister of Bangladesh and fled the nation, the end result of a student uprising that noticed essentially the most widespread participation of girls in avenue protests in Bangladesh’s historical past.
Armed with sticks and stones, Bangladeshi girls headed marches and stood defiant towards riot police and the navy. Their presence turned a defining picture of a revolution that has rewritten Bangladesh’s political and social narrative.
The rebellion led to the institution of an interim government beneath the Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, which has focused on stabilising the country. However within the wake of the political shift, many ladies nonetheless really feel they aren’t being heard. In Might, 1000’s joined the Women’s March for Solidarity demanding the federal government take motion to make sure girls’s rights and security.
Right here, 5 Bangladeshi girls share their experiences of what life has been like for them over the previous 12 months, and counsel the modifications they assume should be made.
Umama Fatema, pupil activist
When Umama Fatema persuaded a bunch of fellow feminine college students at Dhaka College to depart their dormitories to affix one of many protests final 12 months, she had no thought how far issues would go.
“All the pieces occurred so shortly and shortly the rebellion unfold to each nook of the nation,” says Fatema, a pupil activist and key coordinator of the July protests.
“It’s due to girls that the motion turned a individuals’s revolution. With out girls, none of it could have been potential.”
However one 12 months on, Bangladesh’s pupil motion has fractured and optimism is waning.
“The motion raised essential questions relating to governance, accountability and ladies’s rights, which stay unresolved,” Fatema says. “As an alternative of addressing them, individuals have centered on forging their very own political paths.”
Fatema says that after some time, the environment turned so poisonous that girls’s participation within the motion shortly started to drop. Till just lately, she was the spokesperson for Students Against Discrimination, the organisation that spearheaded the coed revolution.
“If girls are included merely as tokens, they maintain no actual energy,” says Fatema. “Consequently, points like rape and sexual harassment are usually not given correct consideration by the state as a result of inside the current energy construction of Bangladesh, girls are nonetheless thought of secondary.”
Fatema argues that the interim authorities’s lack of decisive motion has led to rising public frustration. “Individuals anticipated swift justice, however the course of has moved too slowly,” she says. “All this speak about reform and justice for the useless now appears like empty guarantees.”
Shompa Akhter, garment employee and activist
Shompa Akhter has labored in Bangladesh’s garment trade for almost twenty years. In her village in Kushtia, western Bangladesh, there are few alternatives for girls, so like many, she moved to the capital looking for work.
Employed at a manufacturing facility on the outskirts of Dhaka, Akhter works lengthy hours and earns roughly 15,000 taka (£90) a month – not nearly enough for her family to get by.
“The price of all the pieces has gone up – rice, lentils, greens, oil and fuel – however our wages haven’t stored tempo,” says Akhter.
“My youngsters’s college charges are a continuing fear. We skip nutritious meals simply to cowl that. And God assist us if any of them falls ailing! I typically need to borrow cash from household or mortgage sharks simply to make ends meet.”
Akhter just lately took half in protests demanding greater wages and higher working circumstances for Bangladesh’s 4.4 million garment staff, nearly all of whom are girls. The garment sector, thought of the lifeblood of the nation’s financial system, contributes $47bn (£35bn) annually, amounting to 82% of complete export earnings.
“We garment staff maintain the factories operating and but we’re handled as disposable,” says Akhter. “However our voices matter and we demand wages that mirror our labour and permit us to dwell with dignity.”
“Being a lady in Bangladesh nonetheless means combating to your place – whether or not it’s in your house, office or group,” Akhter provides. “My dream is for my daughters to develop up in a rustic the place they don’t need to battle simply to be heard.
“The federal government should carry us to the negotiating desk. Women should be concerned at each stage of decision-making if we wish actual, lasting change in Bangladesh.”
Triaana Hafiz, transgender mannequin
When the transgender mannequin Triaana Hafiz moved to Dhaka in 2023, she thought issues is likely to be completely different. Rising up in Khulna, south-west Bangladesh, she confronted fixed discrimination and harassment.
“I knew I used to be completely different and so did everybody else. I attempted to maintain my head down however society wouldn’t permit me to exist, even quietly,” says Hafiz.
“It bought so unhealthy, I thought of committing suicide on a number of events.”
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Her large break got here when she landed a modelling job within the capital. “It wasn’t straightforward however in Dhaka I felt I may lastly begin dwelling my life as I actually am. I discovered an exquisite group of open-minded individuals who didn’t query or belittle my id as a transgender lady.”
When the coed protests broke out in 2024, Hafiz felt hopeful. “The primary motto of the revolution was that there can be no extra discrimination,” she says.
“I’m not so naive as to assume this mechanically utilized to me. However I had hoped that this youthful era of leaders can be extra tolerant and inclusive.
“If something, prior to now 12 months, discrimination has gotten worse, with politicians overtly spreading transphobic hate,” she says.
Hafiz needs the interim authorities to include the rights of individuals with numerous gender identities into new and reformed legal guidelines.
“Everybody within the new Bangladesh has the best to dwell with dignity and safety,” she says. “We should be a rustic the place range is well known, not simply tolerated; one the place everybody belongs, no matter gender, intercourse, faith, ethnicity or class.”
Rani Yan Yan, Indigenous rights defender
The Indigenous rights defender Rani Yan Yan hails from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in south-east Bangladesh, which has for many years been a website of ethnic conflict, violence from the military and Bengali setters, displacement and stress.
The area has lengthy had a big navy presence, which has been linked to human rights violations and the suppression of Indigenous rights, together with killings, enforced disappearances, land confiscation and sexual violence towards Indigenous girls and women.
In 2018, Yan Yan was violently overwhelmed by members of the safety forces whereas serving to two women from her group who had been sexually assaulted. In Might this 12 months, an Indigenous lady, Chingma Khyang, was brutally gang-raped and murdered. “This assault was typical of a whole bunch which have occurred over time, the place perpetrators have been granted impunity,” says Yan Yan.
“The interim authorities should instantly put an finish to the tradition of impunity that has lengthy persevered within the Hill Tracts.”
In June, human rights group Ain o Salish Kendra warned of a serious failure of the state to protect women and a breakdown in safety. The organisation has urged the federal government to ship a transparent and agency message that such barbarity has no place in Bangladesh.
“There may be nonetheless a lot work to be executed, however as a precedence, we should make sure that the rule of regulation prevails in Bangladesh, with an open and democratic authorities that’s accountable to all its residents,” says Yan Yan.
Samanta Shermeen, pupil activist
Samanta Shermeen was just lately elected senior joint convener of the Nationwide Citizen occasion.
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“Throughout the [July] rebellion, we noticed Bangladeshi girls play an especially lively and highly effective position. However since then, they’ve been systematically sidelined,” says Shermeen.
“If we will’t give girls the right respect and recognition they deserve, the revolution would have been for nothing.”
Earlier this 12 months, she condemned assaults by radicals who vandalised a pitch forward of a girls’s soccer match. “It was a blatant act of misogyny and a violation of the rules that underpin Bangladesh’s core values,” Shermeen says.
“Regardless of this, our girls’s nationwide soccer workforce has simply certified for the ultimate spherical of the Ladies’s Asian Cup for the primary time,” she says proudly.
“Bangladeshi girls are unstoppable. The extra you attempt to maintain us again, the extra decided we’re to succeed. The revolution proved that – and it was solely only the start.”