Country profilesBangladesh

Humanitarian profile

Bangladesh's geography, dominated by low-lying alluvial plains traversed by major rivers, exposes the country to many disasters, including floods and cyclones. Its high level of poverty also makes the population vulnerable to the expected impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels, shifting monsoon patterns and more intense storms.

Over the past three decades, the South Asian nation has experienced more than 170 large-scale disasters that killed half a million people and affected more than 400 million. Early warning systems set up in the last decade to alert people to weather hazards have saved many lives, however, and have reduced death tolls compared to earlier major storms - including those in 1970 and 1991 - which killed hundreds of thousands.

Country snapshot

Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world and also faces numerous development challenges due to frequent flooding in its low-lying coastal areas, power shortages and rampant corruption. A large part of the population is landless and lives and farms in sites prone to flooding.

The country has been at or near the bottom of numerous accountability, transparency and corruption indices for several years but some recent political and economic developments are encouraging after the military-backed government implemented a programme of widespread institutional reform in 2007-2008 and, in an unprecedented move, started to tackle the country's high levels of corruption. As a result corrupt businesspeople, politicians and high-ranking officials were convicted. Nevertheless, corruption continues to be widespread at all administrative levels.

Government

Bangladesh is a parliamentary democracy. The president, the head of state, is elected by the parliament for a five-year term and can be re-elected once. It is a largely ceremonial role. The prime minister, the head of the government, must be a member of parliament and must command the confidence of the majority of the assembly's members. The parliament is a single-chamber legislature of 300 members who are elected for five-year terms; 45 seats are reserved for women to be distributed according to parties' numerical strength.

Economy

Bangladesh is heavily reliant on remittances from its citizens working abroad and on foreign aid. Economic growth since 1996 has been healthy despite poor infrastructure, overpopulation, insufficient power supplies and the slow implementation of economic reforms.

More than half GDP is generated by the services sector but nearly two-thirds of the population is employed in agriculture. Rice, tea, wheat, jute and sugar cane are the main crops. Bangladesh is the world's largest producer of jute. Textile exports account for some 15 percent of GDP.

Bangladesh possesses few natural resources. Before the global recession began in 2008, Bangladesh was on track to meet its target of halving poverty by 2015. But export demand fell sharply, as did demand for labour in the Gulf, cutting remittances. 

History

Part of British India until the end of colonial rule in 1947, the land now known as Bangladesh emerged as East Pakistan, the eastern wing of Pakistan. An independence campaign started by the Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman - on the grounds that Urdu-speaking West Pakistani rulers denied the East equal rights - became a war in 1971. With India backing the Bengali nationalists, an independent Bangladesh was created in December 1971.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed, with most of his family, in a coup in August 1975. The years after Mujib's assassination saw a series of abortive coups, including one in May 1981 in which soldier-turned-civilian president Ziaur Rahman was killed. Lieutenant-General Hossain Mohammad Ershad, then army chief of staff, seized power in a bloodless coup in 1982.

Opposition groups led by Ziaur Rahman's widow, Begum Khaleda Zia, and Mujib's daughter, Sheikh Hasina, launched a campaign in November 1987 to force Ershad to resign. He stepped down in December 1990. A caretaker authority held Bangladesh's first free elections on Feb. 27, 1991. Khaleda's BNP won a majority and she became the country's first woman prime minister. Khaleda and Hasina held power alternately for 15 years until 2006.

A so-called 'soft coup' was carried out in 2007 as disagreements between the political parties over plans for that year's election led to the appointment of a military backed-caretaker government headed by a former governor of the central bank. Demonstrations against the government, which resulted in several deaths and hundreds of injuries, led to arrests, curfews, media censorship and the closure of universities.  In July 2007 the government arrested Sheikh Hasina on charges of extortion during her time as prime minister but she was allowed to travel to the United States for medical treatment in June 2008. Khaleda Zia was also arrested in 2007 on corruption charges but she and Sheikh Hasina were released to lead their parties in elections in 2008. The Awami League swept to a landslide victory in what international observers declared a broadly free and fair election. A mutiny by border guards in February 2009 left at least 80 people dead.

Legal snapshot

The legal system is based on English common law and Islamic law. The judiciary has become increasingly politicised and there have been frequent examples of interference in decisions by the government, says U.S. based Freedom House. 

Since the appointment of a new chief justice of the appellate division of the Supreme Court in 2008 it has ceased to overturn rulings made against the government, says the U.S. State Department. Pre-trial detention is lengthy and many defendants are not represented by counsel. Bribes are sometimes solicited by clerks, lawyers and judges.

Prison conditions are extremely poor and severe overcrowding means prisoners sometimes have to sleep in shifts. Torture is routinely used to extract confessions and intimidate political detainees. Suspects are frequently arrested without warrants; this is permitted under the 1974 Special Powers Act and Section 54 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Local watchdog Odhikar said 149 people were killed extrajudicially in 2008. 

Rape, acid throwing and other violence against women regularly occur, says Freedom House.  A law requiring rape victims to file police reports and obtain medical certificates within 24 hours of being raped in order to press charges prevents most cases from reaching the courts. Police accept bribes not to register rape cases. 

In rural areas women accused of violating moral codes are flogged on the orders of Islamic religious leaders. There is extensive trafficking in women and children.

The police are the most corrupt part of the legal and law enforcement system, says Transparency International, which ranks Bangladesh in the bottom quarter out of 180 nations in its corruption perceptions index.