Shuprova Tasneem

I first met six-year-old Amina in the Kutupalong refugee camp in 2019. I couldn't help noticing the forlorn image of life in the camps she depicted—a child alone in a corner, playing with a pair of matchboxes instead of a toy.

Does the proposed budget make adequate provisions for the new poor that have been created by the Covid-19 pandemic, and do you think the expanded social protection measures will reach them?

The prolonged school closures in Bangladesh has put us at the top of yet another unpalatable list—according to UNICEF, we have had one of the world’s longest full closure of educational institutions due to the pandemic.

To be honest, I was not that conscious from a young age of the inequalities that exist in our society, or even of the unequal treatment that women receive within their families.

The theme of this year’s Earth Day is “Together, We Can Restore Our Earth”, and at today’s global climate summit, there is a definite focus on

The news last week was dominated by the celebrations of the birth centenary of the Father of the Nation and the pride we felt at reaching the golden jubilee of independence, alongside the concerns over the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hitting Bangladesh in full force.

On March 2, the Prothom Alo shared a post that would move even the hardest of hearts—a photo of Dhaka South City Corporation cleaner Nurjahan Begum, pressing her hands together with tears in her eyes, begging the executive magistrate not to demolish her temporary homestead in Fulbaria, Dhaka.

How should a country treat its detainees/prisoners, especially in the middle of a global pandemic?

On January 5, 2020, a second-year student of Dhaka University was raped in Kurmitola after she mistakenly got off at the wrong bus stop at around 7pm on her way to a friend’s house.

The sky was unusually blue for an early morning in late November, the day Aly Zaker passed away. Everything else that happened after feels like a sort of blur, except I distinctly remember thinking that he would have appreciated the beauty of that cold, clear morning in Dhaka.

We were on strike today to protest the attack on India. None of us went to the university. I sat at home and prepared examination questions. I didn’t go anywhere else today. By evening, I had finished the question paper for the Honours students.

The CCTV footage showing the killing of senior ASP Anisul Karim at Mind Aid Psychiatry and De-Addiction Hospital on November 9 has created a renewed focus on the mostly unlicensed and unregulated private clinics that have cropped up across the city in recent years to cater to a “market” of patients who are easy to take advantage of because of the social stigma surrounding their ailment—drug addiction and related psychological or mental health issues.

I always believed I lived in a tolerant society. What else could one think, growing up in independent Bangladesh?

This past week, the world has been transfixed by the high-drama US elections and the soon-to-be ex-President Trump’s temper tantrums, as his opponent Joe Biden slowly overtook him to become the President elect of the United States.

It the donors’ conference co-hosted by the US, UK, EU and UNHCR on October 22, the international community pledged USD 597 million in humanitarian assistance for the Rohingya.

This month, the release of a gang rape video in Noakhali forced us to take a long, hard look at ourselves and confront an ugly but often overlooked reality—women and children are falling victim to sexual violence on a daily basis in Bangladesh.

On the first day of this month, a class 4 student of a madrasa in Teknaf was forced into a classroom by one of her teachers and raped. The child managed to go home to her mother, but fainted from blood loss right after, and is still receiving treatment at hospital. The accused teacher was arrested on the same night.

The story of migrant labour has two polar opposite faces in Bangladesh—one is the “success story” of hard-earned foreign exchange being sent back to the country by our dedicated migrant workers, keeping their families afloat and propping up the economy as well.

They say that when Rome was burning, its mad emperor Nero stood on its great walls and fiddled while his city was destroyed. While it’s difficult to verify the veracity of an event that is said to have occurred in the year 64, this image comes to mind when we look at Trump and Bolsonara’s (mis)handling of the coronavirus pandemic in their respective countries.

For 29-year-old Taiyyaba Khatun, a Rohingya woman living in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, providing food for her children became an everyday struggle after she had a fall out with her husband.