Lauding highly the socio-economic progress and capacity of Bangladesh, visiting Asian Development Bank (ADB) president Masatsugu Asakawa on Monday said that the lending agency would continue to stand beside Bangladesh in the coming days like in the past. The ADB has been continuing to stand beside Bangladesh in its stride towards socio-economic recovery from the pandemic and would continue to support Bangladesh in future also, he said, reports news agency BSS. The ADB president said this as he met finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal at a city hotel on Monday, said a finance ministry press release. The ADB president has been visiting Bangladesh on 12-17 March marking the 50 years partnership of ADB and Bangladesh. The finance minister lauded the role of ADB as one of the leading development partners since 1973 in the development journey of Bangladesh. He informed that in the last 50 years, ADB made a commitment of $28.4 billion to Bangladesh of which it made a disbursement of $21.1 billion till date. Bangladesh also made a repayment of $6.5 billion as principal amount during this period. Kamal said that the outstanding loan of Bangladesh with ADB is now $14.6 billion which is also 24 per cent of the country’s overall foreign loans. Over the last few years, Bangladesh has become the 3rd largest loan recipient country from ADB. The finance minister apprised the ADB President that Bangladesh has become the 35th largest economy of the world with a GDP size or $460 billion. Besides, he expressed his belief that Bangladesh would become one of the top 20 economies of the world by 2041. “Now our goal is to turn Bangladesh into a smart country by 2041 under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in line with Vision 2041,” he added. Mustafa Kamal also expressed his firm belief that the ADB would play an important role in materialising “Smart Bangladesh,” in the coming days. Bangladesh Bank governor Abdur Rouf Talukder, NBR chairman Abu Hena Md. Rahmatul Muneem, Finance Division senior secretary Fatima Yasmin, Financial Institutions Division secretary Shaikh Md Salim Ullah, ERD secretary Sharifa Khan, ADB’s South Asia Department director general Kenichi Yokoyama, alternate executive director (AED) Azizul Alam, ADB’s country director for Bangladesh Edimon Ginting were present, among others, on the occasion.

The United Nations Security Council should build on its December 2022 resolution on Myanmar by adopting tangible measures to hold the junta accountable for ongoing abuses, Human Rights Watch said. The council will hold a session on Myanmar on March 13, 2023, and hear reports from Noeleen Heyzer, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy on Myanmar, and Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s foreign minister and head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) office of the special envoy on Myanmar. Security Council members should consider the December resolution on Myanmar, which denounced the military’s rights violations since the February 1, 2021 coup, as only a first step to reinvigorate global scrutiny of the junta’s atrocities. The council should take meaningful actions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, including instituting a global arms embargo, referring the country situation to the International Criminal Court, and imposing targeted sanctions on junta leadership and military-owned companies. “Myanmar’s junta has demonstrated it’s impervious to statements of condemnation or concern,” said Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch. “Its disregard of the Security Council’s December resolution shows the need for a new resolution imposing strong measures like an arms embargo and targeted sanctions for senior military officials and companies linked to the military.” Since December, junta security forces have killed at least 263 people through artillery shelling, airstrikes, and arson attacks on villages, as well as torture, rape, and executions in custody, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). The authorities have arrested at least 486 people and sentenced at least 401 over the same period, including teachers, monks, doctors and nurses, lawyers, National League for Democracy (NLD) legislators and party officials, and aid workers. Most of the convictions have carried sentences of between 10 years to life in prison under “terrorism” or “incitement” provisions put in place or expanded by the junta to broadly criminalize the opposition movement. The junta has committed widespread and systematic abuses against the civilian population – including extrajudicial killings, torture, and wrongful imprisonment – that amount to crimes against humanity. Many attacks on civilians and villages are apparent war crimes. Since February 2021, security forces have killed more than 3,000 people and arbitrarily arrested over 20,000. In February, the junta extended its manufactured state of emergency for an additional six months before declaring martial law in 40 new townships across a number of states and regions, transferring all executive and judicial power to the head of the relevant regional military command. The December council resolution called for “full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access,” expressing deep concern at the “increasingly large numbers of internally displaced persons and dramatic increase in humanitarian need.” However, the Myanmar junta is increasing blockages on humanitarian assistance to prevent aid from reaching populations in need as a form of collective punishment. Since the resolution was adopted, military operations in the southeast and northwest have displaced more than 150,000 civilians, bringing the total number of people displaced since the coup to 1.3 million. Armed clashes have affected almost 80 percent of the country’s townships. The December resolution contained numerous references to ASEAN, which adopted a “five-point consensus” in April 2021 in response to the Myanmar coup. Junta chief Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing has since rejected each point of the consensus while exploiting the international community’s deference to the regional bloc. As this year’s ASEAN chair, Indonesia should reroute the bloc’s approach to more effectively isolate the Myanmar junta while soliciting ASEAN support for additional Security Council measures and cooperation with other countries’ efforts to block the flow of revenue and arms to the junta. “The generals have embarked on a scorched earth policy in an attempt to stamp out opposition,” Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, reported earlier this month. “The military, emboldened by continuous and absolute impunity, has consistently shown disregard for international obligations and principles. Urgent, concrete action is needed to end this festering catastrophe.” Security Council members, in light of the junta’s flagrant noncompliance with the ASEAN five-point consensus and December resolution, should use today’s session to identify concrete steps to counter the grave abuses and violations of international human rights and humanitarian law being inflicted daily. “The UN special envoy and Indonesian foreign minister should make clear to Security Council members that the junta’s killings, torture, unlawful arrests, and war crimes demand more targeted action,” Charbonneau said. “Cutting off the junta’s supply of money and weapons is a critical next step to stanch the atrocities being carried out every day in the country.”  

BRAC International executive director Shameran Abed called upon governments and the international community to invest in evidence-based approaches at scale to get the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) back on track, at the 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) in Doha. Abed, who was a lead discussant at the first High-level Thematic Roundtable of the conference, "Investing in people in least developed countries to leave no one behind,” co-chaired by Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera, president of Malawi, and Andrzej Duda, president of Poland, spoke on the urgency and opportunity to renew commitment to the SDGs and the promise of leaving no one behind. Abed said that while interlocking crises like Covid-19, climate change and conflict may make the eradication of poverty seem more challenging than ever before, there are evidence-based programmes that can pull people out of extreme poverty successfully and sustainably, says a press release. He spoke about BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) approach, which combines big push investment in the poorest household with targeted wraparound services, as one such initiative, noting the extensive research demonstrating the programme’s effectiveness in addressing both social and economic vulnerabilities. “What we need to do is stop tinkering around the edges,” he stated, calling for greater global political will, action and investment to massively scale evidence-based initiatives to deliver on the promise made at the start of the Sustainable Development Goals. “Those living in the harshest forms of poverty demand nothing less of us,” he stressed. His comments followed a keynote address by Tarja Kaarina Halonen, former president of Finland, and remarks from panelists including Achim Steiner, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Victoria Kwakwa, vice president for Eastern and Southern Africa at the World Bank. Heads of governments, ministers and senior officials from 19 countries participated during the open debate at the Roundtable.