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Law & Our Rights, The Daily Star The weekly law page from The Daily Star. Email your submissions to [email protected] The law, like any human invention, defies perfection.

Thus, learned men have, since time immemorial, debated law and justice resulting in a never-ending series of epiphanies, each inching us closer to a complete understanding of the law. This page has been officially created in efforts to make 'Law & Our Rights' Section of the Daily Star Newspaper, which comes out every Tuesday, more popular and rights oriented among our readers and attract the non-r

eaders to it. We aim to provide our fans, followers and readers with fast updates and information regarding legal affairs in an organized way. Stay tuned for more news from the legal world!!!

"In effect, the ETFA will reboot Bangladesh's trade regime with an "electronic by design" mandate. As an umbrella law, i...
29/07/2025

"In effect, the ETFA will reboot Bangladesh's trade regime with an "electronic by design" mandate. As an umbrella law, it will merge the scattered facilitation measures, obliging all the border agencies to operate on interoperable platforms like the Bangladesh Single Window. Every permit, certificate, payment, and inspection must flow online which eradicates paper trails and reduces delays and grafts. Standardised risk-based rules deliver quick clearance, especially for perishables, through pre-arrival data, post-clearance audits and formal inter-agency groups that unblock bottlenecks. The prospective Act will override the conflicting statutes and clarify the grey areas. It will also oblige the MoC to publish an annual, agency-level Trade Facilitation Review to keep reforms on track. By cross-linking existing Advance Rulings and Authorised Economic Operator provisions in the Customs Act, 2023, ETFA can knit every process into a trusted digital highway for trade."

✍️ Fuad M Khalid Hossen

Read more about the prospect and necessity of an Electronic Trade Facilitation Act (ETFA) here!

Bangladesh’s trade has doubled in a decade, yet border trade formalities remain manual, redundant, and outdated. While peers digitise, Bangladesh risks falling behind without urgent reform.

"Against the backdrop of a dearth of legal literature on IP in Bangladesh, the book titled 'Intellectual Property Law: T...
29/07/2025

"Against the backdrop of a dearth of legal literature on IP in Bangladesh, the book titled 'Intellectual Property Law: Text, Cases and Materials' authored by Professor Mohammad Towhidul Islam is a timely contribution. This book has painstakingly addressed all basic concepts of IP law through a comprehensive casebook approach blending statutory texts and judicial pronouncements from both home and abroad alongside the author's analytical insights."

Mohammad Foysal writes in his latest book review. Read it here:

Intellectual property (IP) law remains a relatively unexplored area in Bangladesh. From judicial pronouncements to academic scholarships, there is an evident scarcity of authoritative and critically analytical literature on this subject.

"The lack of an effective regime of tort law has serious social consequences. Victims have to bear the economic and emot...
29/07/2025

"The lack of an effective regime of tort law has serious social consequences. Victims have to bear the economic and emotional costs of harm caused to them by others. Hospitals can get away with malpractice suits. Factories have the freedom to pollute rivers without fear of litigation. Institutions can indulge in overt negligence without being held responsible for civil damages. In such context, accountability diminishes, and the people lose faith in the legal system as a whole. This gap is particularly tragic in low-income and rural areas, where tortious harms continue to destroy lives and livelihoods. A small injury resulting from an out-of-control construction site or tainted water supply can leave a family destitute, with no recourse to law," writes Alph Imran Chowdhury.

Read his write-up below.

Although tort law has great potential to ensure accountability and remedy for quotidian civil wrongs, it is largely disregarded and neglected in Bangladesh.

"It is significant to note that the CrPC does not provide an explicit statutory mechanism for reviving such proceedings ...
23/07/2025

"It is significant to note that the CrPC does not provide an explicit statutory mechanism for reviving such proceedings once they have been lawfully stopped. In practice, however, some Magistrates rely on two decisions of the Supreme Court to justify such revival, namely, —Niamat Ali Sheikh v Begum Enayetur Noor (1990) and Mosharraf Hossain Sheikh v Abdul Kader (2004). A closer look at these decisions reveals the correct legal position."

✍️ Rajib Kumar Deb

Read the full article here!

Revival of a criminal proceeding previously stopped under section 249 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 (CrPC) involves important questions about procedural legality and judicial interpretation.

"To ensure meaningful and effective mediation, it is essential to address key social and ethical concerns. Mediators mus...
23/07/2025

"To ensure meaningful and effective mediation, it is essential to address key social and ethical concerns. Mediators must remain sensitive to issues such as gender-based power imbalances, family violence, and the dynamics of fear, silence, and control that disproportionately affect women. In the context of Bangladesh, mediators often go beyond a purely facilitative role and engage in evaluative mediation. While they may offer suggestions or assessments, it is important to note that they do not determine the outcome of disputes or impose decisions on the parties involved (Chowdhury)."

Click the link below to read this article by Satirtha Chakma!

On 1 July 2025, the Legal Aid Services (Amended) Ordinance, 2025 came into effect. The newly enacted ordinance introduced both pre-case and post-case mediation, either physically or virtually by mutual compromise.

"Why a new constitution? It is imperative for several critical reasons. First, it would establish a fresh and legitimate...
23/07/2025

"Why a new constitution? It is imperative for several critical reasons. First, it would establish a fresh and legitimate Grundnorm based on popular will, ensuring a stable and unified legal order. Second, it would definitively end the current legal duality by creating a single, coherent framework, superseding outdated and ad-hoc arrangements. Third, reflecting the people's demand for change, it would embed core principles like accountability and justice, addressing the root causes of the recent national crisis. Fourth, its creation process can foster national dialogue and rebuild trust, contributing to social cohesion. Fifth, it would grant state institutions, including the Supreme Court, a clear and accepted mandate, restoring their effective authority," writes Md. Imamunur Rahman.

Read the full article here!

The seismic events of July-August 2024 plunged Bangladesh into a profound crisis far exceeding a mere political leadership change.

"[I]nternational tribunals, such as the European Court of Justice (ECJ), in Sahar Fahimian v Bundesrepublik Deutschland ...
15/07/2025

"[I]nternational tribunals, such as the European Court of Justice (ECJ), in Sahar Fahimian v Bundesrepublik Deutschland (2017), upheld a wide degree of discretion for states in immigration matters (para 42). However, it is important to note that the ECJ, while granting such wide discretion, also established that this discretion needs to be proportionate and be based upon "sufficient grounds" and a "sufficiently solid factual basis." Similarly, General Comment No. 15 (1986) by the UN Human Rights Committee, which interprets the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ('ICCPR'), states that an alien may enjoy the protection of the Covenant even in relation to entry or residence, for example, when considerations of non-discrimination, prohibition of inhuman treatment and respect for family life arise," writes Sharmista Banik.

Read the full article below.

In recent years, governments of so-called developed countries have increasingly restricted their visa policies as a diplomatic measure against developing nations.

"The real impediment is not resource scarcity but political inertia. Bangladesh is not a country lacking in legal imagin...
15/07/2025

"The real impediment is not resource scarcity but political inertia. Bangladesh is not a country lacking in legal imagination. Our judiciary has often led from the front in cases concerning environmental justice, electoral integrity, and constitutional governance. But without legislative reinforcement, judicial pronouncements become paper tigers—courageous in ink, ineffective in impact."
✍️ Joydeep Chowdhury

Read the full article below.

The Constitution of Bangladesh promises equality, but for a sizeable population of women, this promise has yet to be materialised.

“Unlike the criminal justice system, where the main focus is to punish the offender, tortious remedies' primary focus is...
08/07/2025

“Unlike the criminal justice system, where the main focus is to punish the offender, tortious remedies' primary focus is on compensating the victim for the harm caused in every way possible and for future support and betterment of the victim. There are several remedies under tort law e.g., compensatory damages and punitive damages. The best tort remedies that would be ideal for r**e victims are compensatory damages covering medical bills, therapy costs, and lost earnings due to trauma, and also acknowledging the emotional distress, pain, and suffering of the victim. Punitive damages aim to deter similar incidents from taking place again,” writes Jannatul Ferdows.

Visit the link below to read more!

A prominent human rights organisation Ain o Shalish Kendra reported that there was 4,787 incidents of reported r**e cases in Bangladesh from January 2020 to September 2024. This implies that nearly one woman was r**ed in every nine hours in Bangladesh. According to legal experts, even this horrific....

Md. Rabin Miah says, “Traditionally, Bangladesh's judicial system relied on the Wednesbury Unreasonableness Test (WUT) f...
08/07/2025

Md. Rabin Miah says, “Traditionally, Bangladesh's judicial system relied on the Wednesbury Unreasonableness Test (WUT) for administrative review, as established in Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation (1948). This test sets a high threshold for judicial intervention, limiting scrutiny to cases where a decision is so unreasonable that no rational authority could have made it. Critics argue that WUT grants excessive deference to governmental discretion, inadequately protecting fundamental rights. Proportionality offers a more structured and rigorous alternative, requiring courts to assess if administrative actions are proportionate to their objectives rather than merely avoiding extreme unreasonableness.”

Read the full article here:

Recently, the Constitution Reform Commission (CRC) has made certain reform proposals to be brought to the Constitution. Two main reforms are central to the CRC’s proposal relating to fundamental rights. First, the CRC advocates for the justiciability of socio-economic rights, recognising them as e...

“This perceived hypocrisy is fuelled by the critique advanced by Third World approaches to international law (TWAIL), wh...
08/07/2025

“This perceived hypocrisy is fuelled by the critique advanced by Third World approaches to international law (TWAIL), which posits that international law is not failing, but rather functioning as it was designed: as a system conceived by colonial powers to perpetuate a particular world order. From this perspective, the selective application of legal principles is a feature, not a bug. The swift mobilisation of international mechanisms to address conflicts in Ukraine or East Timor stands in stark contrast to the decades long paralysis concerning Palestine. Legal definitions that seem clear, such as what constitutes an 'occupation' under Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, become mired in semantic debate, and actions deemed illegal by the Security Council, such as the expansion of settlements under Resolution 2334, continue with impunity,” writes Md. Imamunur Rahman.

Read more in the link below.

A compelling exchange once took place between Shami Chakrabarti, former president of the UK-based human rights organisation Liberty, and the eminent jurist Lord Thomas Bingham following his lecture on ‘The Rule of Law’.

Md. Fahmedul Islam Dewan writes, "The BLA governs workers' rights but does not include protection for gig workers. Accor...
24/06/2025

Md. Fahmedul Islam Dewan writes, "The BLA governs workers' rights but does not include protection for gig workers. According to section 2(65) of the Act, a worker is any person, including apprentices, irrespective of whether the terms of his employment are expressed or implied, who works in any institution or industry, directly or through contractor, in exchange of wages or money for any skilled, unskilled, physical, technical, etc. Workers in the gig economy, such as ride-hailing drivers, delivery drivers, and freelancers, do not fall under this categorisation since there is no official employer-employee relationship. Without such a connection, gig workers are arguably ineligible for basic protections such as minimum wage, sick leave, health insurance, and employment security."

Read the full article here:

The gig economy, notably via platforms such as Uber, Pathao, and Foodpanda, has created new possibilities and constraints in the labour markets across various countries, including Bangladesh.

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