Bangladesh. A Development Success Story : Pascal Villeneuve

From the book “Bangladesh. Defying the odds”, by Pascal Villeneuve

In the field of international development, where true success stories are scarce, Bangladesh stands apart. Bangladesh emerged from the ashes of a war of independence in 1971 as the world’s second poorest nation. Many observers doubted that it could survive as an independent state. Since then, the country has increasingly silenced the skeptics. Home to over 160 million people, Bangladesh has made some of the biggest gains in the basic condition of people’s lives ever seen anywhere

Slow shutter speed photo of a bus making its way through Dhaka’s heavy traffic. The face showing on the side of the bus represents Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920-1975), the architect of independent Bangladesh and first President

One achievement is particularly telling. The fertility rate (the average number of births per woman) followed an impressive downward trend, from 7 births per woman in 1971 to 2 births per woman in 2018. This is a major achievement, not just to limit population growth in what is the most densely populated of all large countries, but also to improve the health of women and children.

Young boys. Cox’s Bazar

Many reasons underpin this success story, and many of the lessons and innovations from Bangladesh have been adopted by other countries. Risk taking, research and innovation, large scale programmes based on empirical evidence, and vibrant public-private partnerships are some of the critical factors behind Bangladesh’s well documented achievements. Worth mentioning is the fact that successive governments in Bangladesh have maintained a bi-partisan consensus in favour of social programmes. But where Bangladesh has made a real difference is in the extraordinary complementarity between the state apparatus and grass-root organizations such as BRAC, once known as “Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee”. Founded in 1972 after the war of independence, BRAC has grown into one of the world’s biggest non-governmental organisations, dispensing basic services to the poor and marginalized on a very large scale. GRAMEEN Bank is another familiar name in Bangladesh. A Nobel Peace Prize winner known around the world for its pioneering microcredit approach, it has lifted countless poor women out of poverty and has inspired similar initiatives in many developing countries.

Young boys posing in front of Chanchra Shiva Temple in Jessore.

The Child Survival and Development Revolution (CSDR), spearheaded by UNICEF under Jim Grant’s leadership, took a particular significance in Bangladesh. Bangladesh not only became a CSDR flagship country and achieved impressive results. It also contributed to the science underpinning the CSDR initiative itself. Indeed, during the 1960s and early 1970s, researchers from the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research in Dhaka (icddr,b) developed an oral rehydration solution (ORS) to prevent death by dehydration from diarrhea and carried out landmark studies demonstrating its life-saving potential. In 1978 the medical journal The Lancet termed ORS as “potentially the most important medical advance of the twentieth century”. ORS became one of the highly cost-effective interventions promoted by the CSDR initiative in developing countries.

A “real” Meena attending a primary school in Saint Martin island

One reason why so many parents in Bangladesh and South Asia know how to use oral rehydration therapy is because of a young girl called “Meena”. Meena was born in Bangladesh, and she is famous. She is a spirited, nine-year-old girl, who braves all the odds – whether in her efforts to go to school or in fighting violence and discrimination against children. She has starred in 26 films for television, as well as radio programmes, comics and books. Every year, new Meena stories are read and watched by children and adults alike in the whole of South Asia and beyond. In Bangladesh, Meena is considered a role model and her influence has helped create awareness on a variety of issues such child marriage, child labour, gender equality, importance of education, health and sanitation. Meena is a popular cartoon character at the center of a successful social and behaviour change communication campaign initiated in the early 1990s by a team of UNICEF communication specialists led by Neill McKee.

Tokai

Another popular cartoon character in Bangladesh is “Tokai”. Tokai is a household name symbolizing the poor street boys of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital city and one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Tokai lives on begging and on picking things from dustbins and having a knack of telling simple yet painful truths about the lives of poor people and the politics of Bangladesh. The “father” of Tokai is Rafiqun Nabi, a celebrated painter who played a pivotal role in the development of contemporary art in Bangladesh. When Tokai was created in 1977, child poverty was prevalent throughout Bangladesh. Given the country’s impressive socio-economic achievements since then, one might wonder whether Tokai is still relevant to today’s Bangladesh or whether he should merely serve as an iconic benchmark of how far the country has come since it became an independent nation. To frame this question differently, let us consider how Bangladesh fares in relation to child stunting, a good proxy indicator of child poverty. During the last 10 years, Bangladesh has achieved a 30% reduction in the level of stunting among young children. This is a remarkable achievement. Yet, stunting still affects about one third of young children, and children in the poorest families are still twice as likely to be stunted than children from the richest families. In some way, making Tokai fully irrelevant means that during their first 1,000 days of life, all young children in Bangladesh, both rich and poor, will be at no risk of becoming stunted.

Riverbank erosion, near Barisal

For all its hard-fought successes, Bangladesh unfortunately faces unique challenges due to its location in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, Asia's largest and the world’s most populated delta. ¬¬A large chunk of the population depends on the delta for survival, despite the floods caused by monsoons, heavy runoff, and tropical cyclones. In its southern region, Bangladesh is fringed by the Sundarbans, a huge mangrove forest where the famous but endangered Bengal tiger roams.

Bangladesh is exceptionally vulnerable to severe cyclones, accounting for 70 percent of all storm surges in the world. But with active community participation, Bangladesh has adapted to climate threats, putting in place early warning systems, cyclone shelters, evacuation plans, coastal embankments, and reforestation schemes.

Vulnerable household, near Barisal

Long years of experience with aggressive forces of nature have helped Bangladeshis develop admirable powers of resilience. Huge investments in disaster preparedness and risk reduction have paid off. But the threat continues to mount as low-lying deltas are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Low tide, near Barisal

As sea level rises and saline water reaches further inland, water supplies and agricultural soils are contaminated, making them improper to human and animal consumption and agriculture. Devastating floods and accelerating riverbank erosion are further pushing families in many of the country’s poorest communities over the edge, leaving them with no other choice but to leave their homes. Many move to cities and settle in slums. For migrant children and young people, especially those who lack basic skills, survival in these harsh surroundings means taking on low-paid, exploitative and hazardous work.

Despite Bangladesh’s adoption of stricter regulations and enforcement measures, in 2019, about 1 in 10 children between 5-17 years old were still working under hazardous conditions. These include carrying heavy loads, working with dangerous tools or operating heavy machinery, being exposed to dust, fumes or gas, being exposed to loud noise and vibration, or working with chemicals or explosives.

Young boy working in a brick factory in the periphery of Dhaka

For many impoverished children and young people, mere survival may take the form of a hazardous, low-paid job in one of the brick factories which punctuate the horizon in cities and towns across Bangladesh. In Dhaka, during the dry season, when brickmaking is going full tilt, dust and smoke from wood and coal-fired kilns mingle with clouds of pollution rising from trash fires and vehicle engines, hanging over the capital city like a heavy fog. The hundreds of slender, cylindrical chimneys attached to kilns make no small contribution to what is considered some of the worst air pollution in the world.

Young boys walk along the shore of a tributary of the Buriganga river in the periphery of Dhaka

For thousands of other poor and unskilled young people, getting low paid and hazardous work in a shipbreaking yard on the coast of Bengal is one of the very few employment opportunities available to them. Bangladesh has long been known as a shipbreaking country but the industry has grown in recent years to become the top destination for ship demolition across the world. Every year, approximately 200 steel ships are stripped bare in the numerous shipyards dotting the 15 miles of coastline north of Chittagong, Bangladesh’s second largest city and one of the world's oldest and busiest seaports. The destruction of these steel giants is awe inspiring, but for the thousands of young men working in this industry, ship breaking is a dirty and dangerous occupation which carries a very real risk to life.

A supertanker being cut into pieces in one of the 200 shipbreaking yards north of Chittagong

Children standing in front of a traditional loom. Sirajganj

Young women. Near Mymensingh

The build-up of a critical mass of young literate workers has enabled Bangladesh to successfully establish an export-oriented garment industry, which mostly employs young women. Bangladesh is now the world’s second largest apparel exporter after China. There is no doubt that young women in Bangladesh have earned a degree of autonomy and financial independence from their participation in the garment industry. However, while some have viewed the feminisation of the garment sector as a positive step towards women’s emancipation, this has only happened in a highly exploitative context. Overworked and underpaid, often suffering from work-related illnesses, these young women find it difficult to cope with competing pressures, in the workplace and at home. Many of these young women, who have migrated to urban centers where garment factories are located, have young children and struggle to balance their roles as mothers and wage earners.

Children living in Bangladesh are not all Bangladeshi nationals. For several decades Bangladesh has been hosting Rohingya refugees, one of the oldest and largest refugee communities in the world. In 2017, fleeing horrific and targeted violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, 671,000 Rohingyas crossed the Naf river and settled in Cox’s Bazar district. This new influx joined some 213,000 Rohingya who had fled to Bangladesh in previous years.

Moonlight view of the Naf river and the distant shoreline of Myanmar’s Rakhine State. The river marks the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar. It has been the main point of crossing of Rohingya refugees entering Bangladesh

We know that girls’ education transforms communities, countries, and the entire world. If ever there was a silver bullet to break the cycle of poverty, this is it. Better educated women tend to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn higher incomes, have fewer children, marry at a later age, and enable better health care and education for their children, should they choose to become mothers. In Bangladesh, girls’ education is becoming a growing reality. Literacy rate among young women aged 15-24 year rose from 27% to 95% between 1991 and 2018 respectively. In 2019, 9 out of 10 girls completed primary school, and one in two girls attended upper secondary school, more than boys.

Rohingya women attending a health clinic in a refugee camp near Teknaf

Nearly three decades of successful investment in female education (both formal and informal) and women-centered micro-credit programmes have arguably much reduced the gender gap in education and increased women’s economic participation outside the home. However it has had little effect on ending the practice of child marriage in Bangladesh.

Schoolgirls peering at me through a bullseye window in a primary school near Barisal. The poster on the wall features a photo of James P. Grant, taken during one of his visits to Bangladesh.

Pre-school girl. Early childhood development center. Chittagong Hill Tracts

Though historical records show that the practice is slowly declining, about one in two girls in Bangladesh still marry below the legal minimum age of 18, one of the highest rates in the world. And about 15% of them marry before the age of 15. The poorer the parents, the higher the risk of being forcibly married before 18. Child marriage is associated with a number of negative outcomes for girls including an increased risk of intimate partner violence, higher maternal mortality and lower education levels. Young brides fleeing home to escape domestic violence often fall prey to sex traffickers and many end up in brothels.

Adolescent girl. Near Barisal

In Bangladesh there are several interconnected forces driving the high rate of child marriage. These include poverty, ignorance, gender discrimination, internal displacement, persistence of illegal dowry practice, and preserving family honor. Poverty and internal displacement are exacerbated by loss of habitat and assets linked to natural disasters and river erosion, both intensified by climate change. Many poor parents see child marriage as their best option to safeguard the future of a daughter they feel they can neither feed nor educate nor protect. The still widespread practice of girls’ families paying dowry to the groom creates additional pressure for poor parents to marry off their girls early, as dowry tends to be lower and even avoidable for the youngest of brides. Harassment and intimidation of unmarried adolescent girls also play a major role in driving child marriage, as parents often see marriage as a solution to “protect” the girl and preserve family honor.

Polio vaccination session. Saint Martin island

Having a birth certificate is an important protection against unlawful child marriage, as it allows to determine if someone is old enough to legally marry. Bangladesh is making important strides in this critical domain. Whereas only one in ten Bangladeshi children had a birth certificate 15 years ago, it is now one in two children who holds this precious passport to lifelong protection and access to full citizenship rights. Immunization contacts such as those occurring during polio campaigns are important opportunities to verify that a child has been provided a birth certificate.

In recent years, a child helpline was set-up in Bangladesh to allow adolescents, peers, and community members to alert local authorities so that they can intervene to prevent or reverse an already concluded child marriage.

SwimSafe programme. Near Dhaka

Other initiatives such as the SwimSafe programme empower teenage girls to teach young children how to swim and tread water. In Bangladesh, drowning is the leading cause of death among children, causing over one third of all child injury deaths. In this innovative approach, community ponds are used as swimming pools with bamboo structures separating the teaching area.

A growing number of adolescent girls, especially in poor and marginalized communities, have now access to “safe space” centers, where they can come to relax, play, have conversations or receive support in a setting free from judgment or discrimination. In such centers, they have the opportunity to connect to peers who may be facing similar challenges, such as the threat of being forcedly married. This connection can make them feel less isolated and help them develop more effective coping mechanisms. As a consequence, such sanctuaries can be powerful platforms for healing, empowerment and resilience, where friendships and strong bonds are forged.

Adolescents in Bangladesh are entitled to look for a future where all of them, girls and boys, are free to express their full potential and contribute to a better humanity for their own children. This may sound like nice wishful thinking. But many elders in Bangladesh remember the time when, as young people, they too believed in a future that seemed hopelessly unrealistic to many observers at the time. Yet, they defied the odds and turned obstacles into a myriad of opportunities. This historical background is a tremendous stepping stone for children and adolescents in Bangladesh. Energized by their elders’ example, they too should embrace the future with eagerness and resolve, confident in their individual and collective capacities, as it is their world and will remain so for many decades to come.

Adolescent club. Chittagong Hill Tracts

Pascal Villeneuve can be reached via pascal.villeneuve2506@gmail.com

Pascal's website is: www.pascal-villeneuve.com 

Pascal's Instagram account is www.instagram.com/villeneuvepascal.photo/

The book: "Bangladesh. Defying the odds" can be purchased via Pascal's website.