Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. (Aroved for ratification
by General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of 9 December 1948 and entry into force on 12 January
1951, in accordance with article XIII).
Minority rights apply to ethnic, religious, linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples, who are an
integral part of international human rights law. As the minority women are one of the most trageted
victims for torture and systematic discriminations, like other rights (such as children's rights,
refugee rights), the issue of the minority women‟s rights MUST be a legal framework designed to
ensure that a specific group which is in the highest vulnerable situation, disadvantaged or
marginalised position in society, is able to achieve equality and is protected from all forms of
persecutions and discriminations.
Our aim is to establish and then promot the practical respect for the human rights of ethnic,
religious, linguistic minorities women and indigenous women in Bangladesh. While initially, the
United Nations treated indigenous peoples as a sub-category of minorities, there is an expanding
body of international law specifically devoted to them, in particular Convention 169 of the
International Labour Organization and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
(adopted 14 September 2007).
Minority Women in Bangladesh.
Saying specifically about the rights of Bangladeshi minority women, we must cite the wise quote:
„Human rights issue does not include the rights of the women.‟ (Charlotte Bunch. 1990. Women's
Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights. Human Rights Quarterly Vol. 12,
No. 4 (Nov.,1990), pp. 486-498). In Bangladesh, the minority women are mainly deprived from
equal rights to education, economic and employment sectors, political involvements, sexual, social,
idelogical, religious and spiritual/pastoral lives. Of course, not all these deprivations are because of
gendaral and political motivation. But whatever the motivation and/or ideology is there, undoubtly
the minority women are freequently being victimised. Moreover, there has been no strong
legislative and pratical solusion of these on-going problems in Bangladesh. And that is probably the
fandamental difference for the issue of minority women‟s rights from the rest of the world.
Bangladesh was independent in 1971 through a long nine months blooded war, where significant
contribution and sacrifice had been done by the female population. However, the female sadly
achieved the right in 1972 to vote a full year of the male. This constitutional deprivation have
become a continuum, because of which the most victim part became the minority women ( as stated
above, multiple discrimination for their double vulnerability).
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