Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi's speech last Tuesday had the potential to change the scenario of the ongoing Rohingya crisis and end the misery of the more than 400,000 refugees in Bangladesh.

Overeignty is sometimes an overused yet largely exploited concept in the world of international relations. In its truest sense, sovereignty is a fundamental term designating supreme authority over a certain polity.

As I watched President Trump deliver his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on the morning of September 19, I couldn't help but be dismayed by the fact that he did not consider the current round of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Myanmarese military rulers egregious enough to mention it even once during his speech.

“I am at Balukhali camp in Ukhia, the situation is far, far worse than what I have seen on the media, I just talked to a woman who is 9 months pregnant, no idea where her husband is, had not one thing to eat today."

The unanim-ously adopted press statement of the UN Security Council (UNSC) condemning violence in Myanmar at the closed-door meeting on Wednesday is encouraging but unlikely to deter the Myanmar government from continuing its heinous acts of ethnic cleansing.

According to the latest UN report, nearly 400,000 Rohingya refugees have crossed over to Bangladesh. The Rohingya people, living in the Rakhine State of Myanmar, are fleeing their homes they have lived in for 200 hundred years.

“We will remain unwritten through history, no X will mark us on the map; but in books of prose and poetry, you loved me once, in a paragraph.”

While it is encouraging to know that Bangladesh has taken diplomatic initiatives to bring the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis to the international fora, the question is whether it has devised a strategy to go forward.

While the climate change is already understood as an economic and environmental problem, the tendency to view this phenomenon through the lens of human rights implications has been little. Recently the trend has changed.

Rohingyas of northern Arakan are facing yet another round of armed atrocities. Not only are they at the receiving end of indiscriminate use of bullets, bayonets and firing from helicopter gunships; their homes, hearths, livestock, crops and businesses are being consumed by bellowing fire deliberately lit by the Burmese security forces and their Rakhine cohorts.

August 30 reminds the international community that enforced disappearance is a crime and cannot be condoned under any circumstances.

One bright spark once said: “truth is stranger than fiction”. I think it was Mark Twain who uttered the immortal words, but I personally didn't hear him, so I can't be sure. But whoever said them knew what he was talking about.

When 14-year-old Yasmin Akhter was reassured by some police officers that they would drop her home after she missed her bus to Dhaka from Dinajpur, she probably didn't think twice about it. Like many of us, she probably believed that she would be safe with these protectors of law.

Hamid Ansari's concern over unease among Indian minorities came just after Pakistan swore in its first Hindu cabinet minister in 20 years. Truth is contrary to this clickbait.

The perpetrators would not be held accountable because as soon as the deed was done, they had the luxury of leaving the area. Their job gave them mobility, a freedom that was paid for by others.

As we step in the 10th year since the UNDRIP was adopted by the General Assembly, we must recognise that the declaration is the most comprehensive international agreement on the rights of indigenous peoples.

The state of Bangladesh appears to be clamping down on its active citizens. Almost every month, we are coming across reports of police excesses against protesting students...

More than two dozen editors, journalists, teachers, social media users and free thinkers have already been sued on charges of defamation under Section 57 since March this year.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina did a commendable job when she asked the administration and her party leaders to inquire into...

Let's start with the “punishment” awarded to the health workers. This is not the first time that government officials were transferred to remote areas as “punishment”. This practice is, in fact, quite common.