It was a landslide victory in 2015 for Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).

Did you know that the Rohingyas have a football team of their own? Well, you can’t be blamed for not knowing that, because they are not members of the FIFA or the Asian Football Confederation.

Bangladesh is a service sector led economy, where 52.8 percent of the GDP comes from the service sector, followed by 29.6 percent from industry and 12.6 percent from agriculture.

Over the last three years, the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf have been telling us many stories of failures, successes and uncertainties.

After August 25, 2017, headlines across the world were dominated by the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.

It is incredible how the death of one person can impact the future of a country for generations to come. In the month of August, we remember the Father of the Nation with great remorse and regret over his heinous killing as well as his unfinished life and work. In our journey “from darkness to light, from captivity to freedom, from desolation to hope”—Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s words are resolutely appended everywhere.

The damage inflicted by Covid-19 globally is not just the growing toll of infections and deaths, the overstrained healthcare workers and the sector. It is much more (economic, social, psychological and political), and it is not only about now, but also about the future.

With the Covid-19 contagion from late 2019 spreading internationally this year, governments have responded, often in desperation. Meanwhile, predatory international law firms are encouraging multimillion-dollar investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) lawsuits citing Covid-19 containment, relief and recovery measures.

Women are sometimes considered to be the weaker sex because men on average are taller, more muscular, and seemingly stronger than women.

In a bid to support the cottage, micro, and small enterprises (CMSEs) mired in financial difficulty caused by Covid-19, Bangladesh Bank approved a credit guarantee scheme (CGS) worth Tk 20,000 crore on July 23, 2020. Subsequently, the CGS Unit of BB issued a circular on July 27 defining the scope and detailing other aspects of the scheme such as, the eligibility criteria for scheduled banks and financial institutions (FIs) as well as for enterprises, application procedure, fee structure, responsibilities of the scheduled banks and FIs, claim settlement, etc.

Government projects targeting the poor, like any other projects, if not well planned and properly implemented, will not yield their desired outcomes.

Achieving peace in Afghanistan is a strenuous and complex task due to the overlapping interests of many that have turned the country to the forefront for geopolitical rivalries.

A number of articles recently published in the media have questioned the merits of the Sinovac’s inactivated SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) vaccine and whether the government of Bangladesh should now approve a Phase III trial of the vaccine to determine how well it protects Bangladeshi adults against SARS-CoV-2. Many of the published negative comments are unfounded.

The 6th and 9th of this month marked the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, that killed an estimated 120,000 people instantly.

For a blissfully long period of time, much of subcontinental politics had been kept alive and rather exciting by a mix of erudite or frothy politicians who could be credited with sustaining people’s interest in public affairs.

History shows that the strength of relations between states, particularly among neighbouring ones, lies in withstanding tests and, if done right, comes out looking better, both perceptively and in substance, in the end. The recent sudden and previously unannounced visit by Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla to Dhaka needs to be seen in that context.

If six months ago someone had proposed shutting down the whole world to resolve a crisis, they would have been laughed off. In times of shock, impossible ideas suddenly seem possible and, more often than not, it’s the corporations that reap the benefits of that possibility.

One glaring truth the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced when it comes to gender-based violence is that it is a humanitarian, development and socioeconomic crisis—a persistent and daunting triple threat whose solutions must be grounded in gender equality and human rights.

What happens when a violence or disaster takes place leaving thousands of people in humanitarian crises?

Before Aung (name changed) had attended his first university class, he became the subject of a post on his batch Facebook group.