Human Rights

One of the projects Iqram is in charge of is educating village women about their rights. We got a chance to be there when he was facilitating one of these discussions. The topic of the discussion for the day was social discrimination. The women were talking about ways they had been socially discriminated, including not being allowed in tea shops, nor allowed proper funerals, nor to take their pigs to the river. They are also denied land or subsidies that the government gives them and at times forced at ransom to give up their land to wealthy landlords. Unfortunately the security situation in Bangladesh is very lacking and the police are in on a lot of the discrimination. There are just too many corrupted officials and people who exploit them for personal gain.


Iqram insists on sitting on a mat at eye level with them, even though they tried to get him to sit on a chair. This concept of trying to teach them through example that all are equal no matter what.