Community Initiative for managing disaster
Chatka: A Bamboo binding community initiative to check river erosion
The farmers of Sonatoni union have taken an innovative initiative to check river erosion by Chatka. This is a Bamboo binding - an indigenous practice that redirects the water flow of the river. Locally it is called ‘Chatka’. The bamboo binding resists soil erosion, turn silt, deposit soil formation and helps accretion of l
Women's Conference & Festival, 2012
JAMRUL Tree Symbolising the Future Women Want
Over 176 women representing different women’s organizations, farmers, weavers, potters, indigenous women, writers and poets, and crafts persons from 47 districts joined together in a conference jointly organized by Narigrantha Prabartana and Tabinaj (Women’s Alliance against Tobacco) on 24th March, 2012 held in Local government Engineering building, Dhaka. The event was organized by Narigrantha Prabartana and Tam
The Future They Want
A Critique of the Rio+20 Zero Draft
Twenty years after the Earth Summit, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) will take place in Rio from 20-22 June, 2012. For two decades, peoples movement have worked hard for social, economic and environmental justice but yet the global economic system only resulted in a billion people starv
Nayakrishi Andolon
Peasant Movement Constituting Life-affirming Communities in Bangladesh
Led by small scale farming communities of Bangladesh, biodiversity-based ecological agriculture, known as Nayakrishi Andolon (New Agricultural Movement), has become popular as a peasant movement. It is not a 'traditional' farming practice in a static sense but aims at enhancing capacity of the farming communities to absorb advances in environmental, ecological and
Sale of body parts for overcoming poverty and indebtedness!
Poverty Trap and the Kidney trade
In a country where over 40% of the population lives below poverty line and 13% (or 20 million) of the total population suffer from kidney diseases, the link between kidney trade and poverty is not very difficult to establish. The recent incidents of kidney trade, by some unscrupulous ‘brokers’ buying the kidneys from the poor people for transplantation within and outside the country, has raised serious concern among the gen
International conference on shifting out of tobacco
Impact of Tobacco Cultivation and Policy Advocacy for Shifting to Food and Other Agricultural Crops
The concerns about the harmful affects of consumption of tobacco products and tobacco cultivation in Bangladesh have drawn considerable attention over last few years. Since the efforts at the global and national level to regulate the use of tobacco products which include the World Health Organization (WH
Women Learning from Egypt
Inspired by Nawal in Egypt
This year (2011), on the occasion of the International Women’s Day, perhaps the most interesting thing to discuss is the uprising in the Arab world particularly in Egypt and Tunisia. It was really inspiring to see the young generation active in the movement and not giving up till they have achieved their goal. In Cairo, there were hundreds of thousands of men and women in Tahrir Square. Some
Struggle for Conserving Local Rice Varieties
Perspectives of Nayakrishi, scientists, politicians and farmers
In the month of Agrahayan, the eighth month of Bengali calendar, (early December) over 500 Nayakrishi farmers from 19 districts got together in Tangail to exhibit the rice varieties in their own collection and to discuss the issues that has caused threats to the preservation of rice varieties. It was a festival organized by UBINIG and Nayakrishi Andolon held during
Commercialisation of women's infertility
Nobel Prize for IVF or dehumanizing technology?
Robert G. Edwards is awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for physiology/ medicine for the development of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy. According to the Press release of the Nobel Committee “His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10% of all couples worl
Threat of US Sanctions
Trafficking & Free Movement of Labour: Bangladesh on Tier 2 Watch list!
Bangladesh is placed on Tier 2 Watch List, according to the 9th Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) 2009 published by the Department of State of the United Stated of America. Every year the Department of State is required by law to submit to the U.S. Congress a report on foreign governments’ efforts to eliminate "severe forms of trafficking in persons". The United States’ T
