Bangladesh - a Happy Land?

by Bruce Houlder QC

(a member of TI-B)

A recent survey commissioned by the think tank Demos and published in The Sunday Times (6th December) placed Bangladesh at the top of the list of nations with the happiest people alive.

Its purpose was to inform us that money is not everything. Having just returned from Bangladesh, my feeling is that the issues are somewhat more complex.

I was one of a party of English barristers giving unpaid assistance to the British Council to run a law week; it focused on delivering human rights through the more efficient administration of justice and the fulfilment of the high - but unachieved - aims of their constitution.

The response from the senior and most influential lawyers there was impressive, but they have a more realistic assessment of their unhappy people, and a real authority to speak.

We were reminded that in the Indian sub-continent alone half the population do not have any toilet or washing facilities. Millions do not have one meal a day or even the most basic roof over their heads. A staggering 80% live on less than $2 a day.

Imagine severely limited life expectancy, the routine abuse of children's rights, and a place where women have to struggle for their rights. Imagine the untold poverty of a population of 120 million in a country that can barely support 25 million, and is dependant on aid for its very survival.

What you see in Bangladesh is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit against adversity. Such dignity should not, however, be confused with happiness as we understand it.

Anyone who is concerned with human rights should ask what they can do to raise the awareness and the levels of expectation of a people which has little voice to speak on the international stage.

The Bangladeshi constitution enshrines many of the aims of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, whose 50th anniversary has just been celebrated.

But there was too little evidence of those rights being played out in terms of achievable government policy on child labour, on the inhuman treatment of prisoners in custody, on imprisonment without trial, on subverting the rights of women to property, or on directing aid to the places it really should go.

The Bangladeshi Law Minister, Abdul Matin Khasru MP, was clearly well motivated, but oppressed by the enormity of the task he faced.

And one of the country's most distinguished former judges Justice Naimuddin Ahmed, now a Law Commissioner, spoke openly of the steps taken to tackle the failings of the justice system.

But the apparent inability of the judges to exercise the power they undoubtedly had to influence their society for the good was noticeable, as was the lack of funds to achieve it.

A report by the human rights organisation Transparency International on Bangladesh recently found that 90% of those surveyed thought their judges and police force were corrupt.

But those we met were undoubtedly not, and were vocal and sincere in their concern for the country. I expressed the view that, until those truly responsible for bad practices were seen to be effectively prosecuted and punished, then no change was possible in society as a whole.

It was refreshing to see that corruption could at least be openly acknowledged by students and lawyers alike. Indeed, we heard from a local newspaper editor who was given sufficient freedom to talk about it.

While the broadcast media remains under some government control, the printed media does not, though this may be a mere reflection of the fact that so few in the country can read or write.

Access to justice is a meaningless label in Bangladesh too, and it is likely to remain the case that the poor that are denied justice despite plenty of rhetoric to the contrary.

While traditional forms of alternative dispute resolution - known as shalish - are as old as time itself in Bangladeshi village communities, the courts have shown themselves unable to deliver justice to any but an elite few.

The fact is that most people do not even have the basics. They have limited access to education, no proper housing, no state support. Each year thousands die of flood and disease. What happy people are these?

Justice Naimuddin Ahmed, who met our own Lord Chancellor earlier this year in London, reminded us that 'the beautifully crafted international rights instruments have no meaning or significance to these deprived millions...to the eight-year old girl standing on the highway with her two year old brother in her lap, her face representing the starving millions around the globe'.

Such stark language prompted our small group of English barristers - Patrick Curran QC, David Hislop, Kim Stafford-Smith and myself - to ask what, if anything, our efforts had achieved.

But Sital Dhillon, who also trained as a barrister in the UK but is now the British Council's Governance and Law adviser for South Asia, had no doubt of the value of what we had been doing.

The many human rights workers, lawyers and teachers that attended this week had much experience to share, and they had no doubt about the value of their work.

And when we met a group of young Bangladeshi lawyers who had attended the law week we had no doubts either.

They were to split up at the end of the week to travel to their own communities throughout the country to use what they had learnt that week in a practical setting - at a one-to-one level in the villages. This was where it really mattered.

They were learning what the rule of law in society means, and how it would shape their future. They were certainly making a start.

Bruce Houlder QC, a practising barrister at 6 Kings Bench Walk, Temple.