Word: bangladesh
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...this poll as a victory of the people," says Adilur Rahman Khan, director of Odhikar, a human rights group based in Dhaka. Bangladesh has spent the last two years under the rule of a military-backed caretaker government that held tightly to its emergency rule. When elections were finally held after months of delays, 85% of eligible voters came to the polls - about 81 million people, more than half of them women and one-quarter of them first-time voters. "After many years, I have voted peacefully and without any fear," says Rokeya Begum, 45, a housewife in the Khilgaon...
When Humayra Abedin left the U.K. on Aug. 2 with a round-trip ticket to Bangladesh after hearing that her mother was sick, she had no idea the "illness" was a ruse to lure her home to marry a suitor of her parents' choice. But on Dec. 17, Abedin, a 32-year-old doctor who has lived in Britain for the past six years, confirmed in a statement that she had been held captive for four months in her native country and coerced into a marriage by her mother and father. "I was forced to marry a person...
...Earlier in December, after being alerted to her situation, the British High Court had issued an injunction to Abedin's family in Bangladesh to allow her to return to the U.K. under Britain's Forced Marriage Act of 2007. It was the first time the law - which went into effect on Nov. 25 of this year and gives courts the power to protect forced-marriage victims and dole out sentences to their perpetrators - was invoked on behalf of someone who is not a British national. While the court order had no legal bearing in Bangladesh, a sympathetic judge, Justice Syed...
...involved women, though experts estimate that 15% of cases worldwide may involve men marrying as a result of family pressure. "We're definitely getting more calls than normal," says FCO spokesman Nick Branch. Branch says most of the unit's cases this year involved families from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh...
...Typically, when those actions take place in a failed or failing state - one with no law and little government - the consequences are negative. They include a refugee and disease exodus (such as from Zimbabwe), sex trafficking (Bangladesh and Nepal) and drug-smuggling and terrorism (Afghanistan and Tajikistan). Indonesia, which has a weak government and endemic poverty and also happens to abut another primary sea route, was the world's worst piracy hotspot for a decade, until a couple of years ago, when it was overtaken by Nigeria, which has little law but plenty of poverty and oil platforms...