Violence against women and children is rising. Child marriage is rising. Child brides are at even higher risk of violence, putting girls across the world in danger. As the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence close for 2019, let all us pledge to build a better world for girls and women. Here is a snapshot of what BRAC is doing.
Bangladesh is the fifth highest labour sending country in the world, but it is also among the top 10 countries from where people migrate across the Mediterranean Sea on boats. The country earns USD 15 billion a year in remittance, but that is a success story that comes at a high price.
You’d be forgiven for thinking microfinance has gone wildly out of fashion. The “development caravan”—defined as the wagon train of poverty interventions that excite donors—has pulled away from micro-lending, drawn to more powerful things like BRAC-style graduation programmes (which aim to “graduate” people from extreme poverty into a sustainable livelihood) and bKash-like mobile money, according to recent coverage in The Economist.
Waiting at an airport on my way home from a trip to Malaysia, a man walked up to me hesitantly and asked if I could help him fill out his immigration card. He was a Bangladeshi man in his mid-40s. While filling out his documents, we started talking and I learned that he was on a migrant worker’s visa and used to be a chef at a resort. When I asked him if he was headed home for a vacation, he informed me with a stoic expression that he was being deported for being Hepatitis B positive.
As of 2014 there are more than nine million Bangladeshi migrant workers abroad. These migrants are not only supporting their family at home but they are significantly boosting Bangladesh’s national GDP. Eight percent of the total GDP of 2014 was a direct contribution of migrant remittances.
There are 232 million people living outside their country of origin, and Samina Begum from Bangladesh was almost one of them. There is an estimated 8 million Bangladeshis working abroad, sending back remittances of around 12bn USD. This year alone, another 1.4 million – almost 1 percent of the country’s population – joined them.
Moksedul, a Bangladeshi migrant worker who resided in Qatar for three years, almost believed that his voice was never to be heard; that his stories would remain untold. In fact, it almost came as a shock to him when he was asked to get up on stage and speak up, and speak up he did.
Below is a post by Renee Woliver about SIT Professor Jeff Unsicker, who recently conducted assessment of BRAC’s Advocacy Unit in Bangladesh. SIT Professor Jeff Unsicker recently returned from Bangladesh where he completed a Rapid External Assessment of the Advocacy Unit of BRAC – one of the world’s largest and most respected development NGOs. He also facilitated a four-day training on advocacy for 20 staff in the unit and several other BRAC programs. Jeff teaches policy analysis and advocacy courses at SIT. Read his complete bio.