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The Wire
06-05-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
Bangladesh: Sheikh Hasina is Out but Her Legacy of State-Sponsored Violence Will Linger Much Longer
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Opinion Bangladesh: Sheikh Hasina is Out but Her Legacy of State-Sponsored Violence Will Linger Much Longer Nayel Rahman 36 minutes ago Bangladeshis inhabit a country that has normalised everything; where outrage is fleeting, where justice is cosmetic and where brutality becomes just another tool of governance – used, denied, and quietly rewarded. Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Photo: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development/Flickr. CC BY 2.0. Prior to her ousting, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presided over not just authoritarian entrenchment but a series of state-perpetrated mass killings that should have triggered national reckoning – and international condemnation. There were at least three major blood stains during her tenure: the indiscriminate firing on protesters following the Sayedee verdict in 2013, the brutal military crackdown at Shapla Chattar in May of the same year and the lethal suppression of demonstrators during the 'Long July' protests. Each of these episodes was marked by an open use of force against unarmed civilians, carried out by state security forces acting with apparent political direction – and without consequence. And then there was the Pilkhana attack. Though not ordered by her government, the gruesome massacre of army officers at the Bangladesh Rifles headquarters in 2009 remains shrouded in questions – most disturbingly, about what the state chose not to do. Whether through negligence, indifference or calculated political restraint, the regime's passivity in the face of that catastrophe stands as a form of complicity. What's more damning than the violence itself is the silence that followed. The silence of political parties too busy jockeying for power. The silence of civil society is too paralysed – or too compromised – to act. The silence of the public, disoriented by propaganda and repression, unsure where to turn. This collective failure has not merely emboldened Sheikh Hasina – it has licensed her. It has allowed her to unleash what now functions as a state-aligned militia, operating both in uniform and in plain clothes, to enforce loyalty through fear. Each act of state violence becomes easier, more open, more shameless. Bangladesh did not arrive at this moment by accident. We arrived here because the institutions meant to restrain power – press, parliament, protest – were dismantled, and because those with the means to resist often chose comfort over confrontation. There comes a point when inaction becomes complicity – Bangladesh was long past that point. How did we reach here? Sheikh Hasina's descent into open violence did not begin in Dhaka but it eventually arrived there, more brutal and brazen than ever before. What began with the quiet slaughter of protesters in peripheral towns after the Sayedee verdict was soon brought to the heart of the capital. The carnage came to Motijheel, the city's commercial centre, where armoured vehicles and tear gas became instruments of civic policy. Then it spread even further – to once-untouchable neighbourhoods, areas never meant to feel the sting of state brutality. In Baridhara, often referred to as Dhaka's 'Green Zone,' residents watched in horror as the road from Badda to Rampura transformed into a war zone. From balconies and drawing rooms, they saw their city overtaken by military-grade repression, like spectators to a siege they had thought only others would endure. In most functioning democracies, such bloodshed in peacetime would be enough to dissolve a ruling party – perhaps even to end its existence. The idea that a government could use lethal force so casually, and so publicly, would have sent it to the political graveyard. However, Bangladesh is not most democracies. Bangladeshis inhabit a country that has normalised everything; where outrage is fleeting, where justice is cosmetic and where brutality becomes just another tool of governance – used, denied, and quietly rewarded. The threshold for ethical revulsion has all but vanished, replaced by a culture where any instrument of repression can be justified if it serves political gain or financial interest. And this failure – this refusal – to hold perpetrators accountable cannot disappear with Sheikh Hasina's ouster. It will haunt us long even as she's gone. It will linger because impunity is infectious. When a state teaches its rulers that killing civilians carries no price, it invites the next strongman to do the same, only worse. By not punishing those responsible, by refusing to investigate, indict or even publicly shame them, we have all but invited the next autocrat to write their playbook from this one. The blood spilled in Motijheel, Rampura and beyond did not just mark the end of protests, it marked the beginning of a new kind of politics – one rooted in fear, executed through force, and immune to consequence. The danger now is not only in what has already been done but in what we have made possible. Nayel Rahman is a Dhaka-based political analyst. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News Dhaka's Murshidabad Remarks Attempt to Deflect Attention From Its Internal Issues: MEA Daud Haider, Bangladesh's First Poet to be Exiled, Passes Away at 73 MEA Condemns Killing of Hindu Community Leader in Bangladesh, Urges Interim Govt to Protect Minorities Murshidabad Violence Not Just a Communal Clash but 'Deeply Organised': Fact-Finding Report From Balochistan to Kashmir, the Region's Unresolved Grievances Refuse To Stay Buried No Need to Protect Those Involved in Wrongdoing, Says SC in Manipur Tapes Hearing Two Years of Fire and Silence: Manipur in Pictures Not Just Murshidabad: Why Bengal's Muslim Community Has Quietly Been Protesting Against the Waqf Law After Two Years of Violence, People in Manipur's Relief Camps Ask Modi to Let Them Feel Like Indians View in Desktop Mode About Us Contact Us Support Us © Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
The Guardian
01-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
I know how global aid works. Here's how Britain can do the right thing – and make its money count
In more than 10 years working in the aid sector, I have seen extraordinary innovations, from childhood education programmes for refugee children, to AI-driven flood warnings that alert farmers in some of the most vulnerable places on earth. Many of the initiatives I've seen are remarkably impactful and deliver serious value for money: it costs the International Rescue Committee (IRC) just £3 ($4) to deliver a life-saving vaccine dose in the midst of a conflict in east Africa, for example. The politics surrounding international aid, however, are increasingly toxic. The UK's Department for International Development and now the US equivalent, USAID, have been dismantled, despite the British public being more than twice as likely to say that aid has a positive rather than negative impact. Denmark has stuck to the UN target of spending 0.7% of its national income on overseas development, yet it is an exception rather than a norm among European nations. The UK government now needs to answer a number of hard questions about aid: what is it for, how should it be delivered, and who should pay for it? In the 1990s, the fight against extreme poverty was a success story. In 1990, more than one-third of the global population lived on less than $2.15 a day; by 2015, that had shrunk to about 10%. Chinese and Indian economic development was critical, but so were aid and debt write- offs such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative. Today, however, the World Bank warns that global poverty reduction has come to a near standstill, and 700 million people are living on less than $2.15 per day. Ukraine is now the world's largest aid recipient. The IRC is proud to work there. But the other 19 countries on the IRC's 2025 Emergency Watchlist, which outlines the world's worst humanitarian crises, are home to more than 240 million people facing increasing displacement and escalating violence. Their needs are acute, from extreme hunger to a lack of basic healthcare and clean water. These 19 countries receive only 12% of total official development assistance (ODA). Of the $212bn global aid budget, more goes to middle and upper-middle income countries than to the least-developed countries. Over the past 10 years, with the launch of the 17 sustainable development goals in 2015, and especially since Covid, aid funds have been used for a range of goals, each desirable in and of themselves, but increasingly in competition with the immediate needs of the poorest people. Humanitarian aid averages about 14% of the total global aid budget, and health spending about 10%. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) analysis shows the largest share of bilateral aid in 2017-21 went on addressing global challenges such as climate mitigation. Meanwhile, richer donor countries are spending as much of their aid budgets on supporting refugees and asylum seekers at home as the total that is spent on humanitarian aid globally. The UK has been part of this trend. Its aid commitments to overseas development have been falling since 2020, and nearly 20% of British 'overseas aid', around £4bn a year, is actually being spent in Britain, on the costs of housing refugees and asylum seekers. The most acute needs are increasingly concentrated in fragile states where governments are weak or at war. The focus of the world's aid budget is being diluted across multiple priorities, and its overall size is being reduced. Meanwhile, the hope that public-private partnerships would direct investment to the poorer parts of the world has not been fulfilled, and the macro-economic environment has turned sour, with rising interest rates sucking money out of developing countries. As the government prepares for its spending review, it has the opportunity to advance Britain's interests and do the right thing. First, it should make sure that its commitment to spend 0.3% of national income on overseas aid actually goes abroad to help those in greatest need. Second, Britain should use its voice and money to focus aid on fragile and conflict-affected states. The government's continued support for Sudan, which is now the site of the world's largest humanitarian crisis, is good policy. However the UN's humanitarian response plan for Sudan remains only 12% funded, largely because of reduced American support. Third, it should focus aid on proven, high impact programmes. There are 45 million acutely malnourished children in the world today, yet the current system for treating them, which is divided between different UN agencies, fails to reach 80% of those in crisis-affected states. IRC programmes have shown how reforming the system to empower community health workers could deliver a cost efficiency gain of 30%, reaching millions more children without spending more money. Fourth, the UK should also lead with its strengths. One particularly promising area is leveraging Britain's leadership in financial services to create new funding mechanisms for development. Currently only 12% of private finance goes to the 25 lowest-income countries , yet incentives for private investment can work in countries that are more stable. To help lower income countries develop their economies, the government needs to adopt a comprehensive approach. Remittances could play a role, for example: they amount to nearly $700bn annually, almost three times the global aid budget. Debt relief could help put education and health systems on a sounder financial footing. And financial mechanisms that blend funding from public and private sources could then build on these more solid foundations. Finally, the government's 'reset' of our relations with the rest of Europe should include shared endeavour to help the world's poorest. The EU is a massive player in this area, with the funding and tools to make it a natural partner for British aid efforts. In all these areas, Britain's interests and reputation will be advanced by activism and innovation, not retreat. The world is more connected. Neglecting other parts of the world will only come back to bite us. The government's cuts are regrettable, but now we need a strategy for the funding that remains. David Miliband is president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lammy's flip-flop on foreign aid isn't fooling anyone
It is a regrettable development when any senior politician's name must be regularly written with the prefix 'poor'. For example: poor David Lammy. How was he to know that his robust criticism of the US government for slashing international aid would come back to haunt him so soon? A fortnight ago, the Foreign Secretary compared the American administration's recent budget cut with the previous UK government's decision to scrap the Department for International Development, suggesting that this 'was a big strategic mistake', and therefore (without actually saying so) that the Trump administration's decision was similarly wrong. Four years ago, before Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Lammy said that it was 'wrong to cut the UK's contribution to foreign aid.' Earlier this month, according to journalist and commentator Andrew Neil, Lammy was still criticising Boris Johnson's former administration for its decision to cut the aid budget to 0.5 per cent of GDP – which is exactly where yesterday's decision by Lammy's boss, Keir Starmer, leaves it in order to raise the promised increase in defence spending. Never have we felt such a difference between today's FCO and the FCO of 1982, when Lord Carrington chose to resign his office as a matter of honour, following his department's failure to anticipate an invasion of the Falklands by Argentina. Given the robustness of Lammy's views on foreign aid – and he has virtue-signalled his superior values to many an audience, even before taking up his current post – it would be perfectly natural to expect him to resign on principle from a government that did not share his values. Except that suddenly, miraculously and unexpectedly, the Government does share his values after all! Or his values this week, anyway, which is more than enough to keep him in post. This newfound political pragmatism is, in some ways, admirable. Whatever silly promises shadow ministers made when they were in opposition, sensible ministers might now recognise that what is important then may not be as important now. But foreign aid? That's a different matter. Lammy has made a reputation for himself as the activist Foreign Secretary, using every available opportunity to associate himself not only with the Windrush generation but with the victims of the transatlantic slave trade. For him the international aid budget should be used, not just as 'soft power' to open diplomatic doors, but to make amends for foreign policy decisions taken hundreds of years ago by long-dead men. He has spoken forcibly and frequently about the evils of Tory governments that cut spending in this area. But no longer. Yesterday he was using the X social media platform to defend a decision on defence spending that, had it been made by a Conservative government, he would have excoriated. If the Foreign Secretary were in a mood to learn political lessons rather than give them, he might conclude that being in government is, after all, harder than it looks from the outside, involving the need, occasionally, to make unpopular decisions and disappoint supporters. It's unlikely that he will have learnt anything at all, except how to hold onto this cabinet seat. Poor David Lammy. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
26-02-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Lammy's flip-flop on foreign aid isn't fooling anyone
It is a regrettable development when any senior politician's name must be regularly written with the prefix 'poor'. For example: poor David Lammy. How was he to know that his robust criticism of the US government for slashing international aid would come back to haunt him so soon? A fortnight ago, the Foreign Secretary compared the American administration's recent budget cut with the previous UK government's decision to scrap the Department for International Development, suggesting that this 'was a big strategic mistake', and therefore (without actually saying so) that the Trump administration's decision was similarly wrong. Four years ago, before Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Lammy said that it was 'wrong to cut the UK's contribution to foreign aid.' Earlier this month, according to journalist and commentator Andrew Neil, Lammy was still criticising Boris Johnson's former administration for its decision to cut the aid budget to 0.5 per cent of GDP – which is exactly where yesterday's decision by Lammy's boss, Keir Starmer, leaves it in order to raise the promised increase in defence spending. Never have we felt such a difference between today's FCO and the FCO of 1982, when Lord Carrington chose to resign his office as a matter of honour, following his department's failure to anticipate an invasion of the Falklands by Argentina. Given the robustness of Lammy's views on foreign aid – and he has virtue-signalled his superior values to many an audience, even before taking up his current post – it would be perfectly natural to expect him to resign on principle from a government that did not share his values. Except that suddenly, miraculously and unexpectedly, the Government does share his values after all! Or his values this week, anyway, which is more than enough to keep him in post. This newfound political pragmatism is, in some ways, admirable. Whatever silly promises shadow ministers made when they were in opposition, sensible ministers might now recognise that what is important then may not be as important now. But foreign aid? That's a different matter. Lammy has made a reputation for himself as the activist Foreign Secretary, using every available opportunity to associate himself not only with the Windrush generation but with the victims of the transatlantic slave trade. For him the international aid budget should be used, not just as 'soft power' to open diplomatic doors, but to make amends for foreign policy decisions taken hundreds of years ago by long-dead men. He has spoken forcibly and frequently about the evils of Tory governments that cut spending in this area. But no longer. Yesterday he was using the X social media platform to defend a decision on defence spending that, had it been made by a Conservative government, he would have excoriated. If the Foreign Secretary were in a mood to learn political lessons rather than give them, he might conclude that being in government is, after all, harder than it looks from the outside, involving the need, occasionally, to make unpopular decisions and disappoint supporters. It's unlikely that he will have learnt anything at all, except how to hold onto this cabinet seat.
Arab News
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
UK's Lammy warns US aid cuts could see China step into ‘gap'
LONDON: British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Friday warned that US President Donald Trump's moves to freeze foreign aid and dismantle the USAID agency could see 'China and others step into that gap.'The UK's top diplomat pointed to reforms by Britain's previous Conservative government to its foreign aid program as 'a big strategic mistake' which the new Trump administration should 'look closely at.'In 2020 the UK government closed down the Department for International Development (DfID) and subsumed it into the Foreign Office, before slashing the aid budget the following moves earned widespread criticism at the time from aid groups and others in the sector, as well as the countries' opposition parties.'What I can say to American friends is it's widely accepted that the decision by the UK with very little preparation to close down DfID, to suspend funding in the short term or give many global partners little heads up, was a big strategic mistake,' Lammy told the Guardian.'We have spent years unraveling that strategic mistake. Development remains a very important soft power tool. And in the absence of development... I would be very worried that China and others step into that gap,' he added.'So I would caution US friends to look closely at what went wrong in the United Kingdom as they navigate this decision.'Trump on Friday called for the United States Agency for International Development to be shut down, in an escalation of his unprecedented campaign to dismantle the massive government aid agency that has prompted confusion and chaos among its global administration has already frozen foreign aid and ordered thousands of foreign-based staff to return to the United States, with reported impacts on the ground steadily growing.
