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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

BANGLADESH

 

Bangladesh is a small country in South Asia. Its neighboring countries consist of India, Nepal, and Myanmar. Bangladesh has been known as East Pakistan for many years. It was not until the Liberation War that they fought for 9 months against West Pakistan (now known as Pakistan) to gain victory. Bangladesh gained its independence on December 16 1971. The purpose of the war was over federal language designation. Bangladesh wanted its national language to be Bengali while West Pakistan disagreed and wanted Urdu to be the national language. 

 

Bangladesh is the eighth-most populous country in the world with a population over 166,368,149 people while being one of the smallest nations with approximately 148,460 square meter. It is almost the size of the state of Iowa.

 

The primary language of Bangladesh is Bengali, also known as Bangla which is a member of the Indo-Aryan language. It is known to be the seventh most spoken native language in the world as there are more than 200 million speakers. The religion in Bangladesh is primarily Islam (90% Sunni) with some followers of Hinduism (9%), Buddhism (0.7%) and Christianity (0.4%) and various other religious groups. 

 

The country suffers from major issues like poverty, illiteracy, crime, population problems, unemployment and refugee crisis. These issues have been ongoing for many years and it is important to address these problems in order to improve the environment of the country. 

POVERTY:

Poverty is one of Bangladesh's striking problems. The citizens live in mud houses, have access to little clean water and have minimal proper shelter. Almost 1 in every 4 Bangladeshi live in poverty. 25% of the whole population of the country lives in relative poverty. Moreover, 13% of the population live in extreme poverty. 

The reason behind the poverty rate is due to lack of education among the citizens. Many parents do not make their children go to school. Instead, they teach their children how to farm and do labor work. This allows the children to make money and help the family. However, this recycles the trend from parents to kids and prevents children having access to education and getting well-paid jobs. 

The government of Bangladesh tries its best to reduce the rate of poverty. The rate of poverty reduced from 19% to 13% in 6 years (2011-2017). This is impressive for such an undeveloped nation. However, it is crucial for the country to get as much help as they can from outside resources to reduce the rate even more. 

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ILLITERACY

Bangladesh has millions of people with little to no education. This is mainly because of parents' pressure to work and provide income for the family. This leads to children not getting a proper education and not knowing how to read and write. The rate of illiteracy in Bangladesh is 47%. 

 

The illiteracy rate has reduced since independence from Pakistan. However, there needs to be much more change in the rules and regulations of the government on education. Kids are not getting the education that they need in order to read and write. 

REFUGEE 

CRISIS

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The Southern districts of Bangladesh, primarily Chittagong, is getting heavily populated with refugees from the neighboring country, Burma. This is occurring due to the Burmese government committing genocide and persecution to a certain group in the country, the Rohingyas. 

 

The government of Burma is ruled by a Buddhist ruler. There is a small population of Muslim citizens in Burma in the Rakhine state. The leader of the country is killing all of the citizens of this state due to their religious stance and views. The citizens have no other choice but to escape to neighboring countries like Bangladesh. 

 

There are thousands of refugee camps in Bangladesh to help the Burmese refugees have a place to live and survive. There are more than a million refugees in Bangladesh. This adds more on top of the country's population already and is accumulating a heavy economic strain on the government of Bangladesh. 

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