Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM)
Madame Chair, honorable delegates, and Excellencies, I address this Forum as a human rights activists
and as a delegate for Bangladeshi minorities. Bangladesh’s minority communities, including Hindu,
Buddhist, Christian, Dalits, and indigenous peoples, have been subjected to a sustained pattern of
persecution, marginalization and institutional neglect since the country’s independence. This reality is
not episodic, it is systemic. It manifests through recurrent criminal violence, land dispossession, forced
displacement, arbitrary detention, false criminalization, and instrumentalization of legal frameworks
to suppress and silence minority voices. The minority population has declined from nearly 30% to
under 9%. This significant demographic shift is closely tied to fear-driven migration, social exclusion,
and longstanding structural discrimination. The Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities has
worked persistently to challenge this injustice. Since 2006, we have pursued domestic litigation and
international accountability mechanisms, including submitting documented evidence to the
International Criminal Court in 2022, an evidentiary process that continues to this day. We have also
launched public interest litigation to address arbitrary detention, sexual violence against minority
women, and the misuse of legal provisions against minority citizens. These initiatives form part of our
transitional justice framework. We urge the United Nations and the international community to
recognize the structural persecution of minorities in Bangladesh, to support minority-focused
transitional justice and to protect human rights in general.