Discussion on geographical indication and what needs to be done

By Dr. Saira Rahman Khan Bangladesh is a country rich in craft and agriculture. Some items are indigenous to its communities and groups of people and need legal recognition in order to maintain their heritage. A geographical indication (GI) is a sign used on goods that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities and characteristics that are essentially attributable to that place of origin. Whether a sign is recognised as a geographical indication is a matter of national law.

A geographical indication points to a specific place, or region of production, that determines the characteristic qualities of the product with relation to that place. A specific “link” exists between the products and their original place of production. Many of our products have acquired reputations which, if not adequately protected, may be misrepresented by dishonest commercial operators. Lack of/false use of geographical indications is detrimental to both the consumers and the legitimate producers.

Bangladesh has many agricultural and handicraft products that deserve geographical indication and international recognition, which is vital for its trade and commerce. Furthermore, such indication will boost these areas and communities of the country, assisting in the financial stability of communities. In 2009, a Bill to introduce geographical indication in Bangladesh was drafted. This Bill is yet to be passed by Parliament.

On 19 January, the BU Law Club of BRAC University and Banglacraft jointly organised a seminar titled ‘Claiming Ownership: A Discussion on Geographical Indication and the Law in Bangladesh’ to discuss the current situation of Bangladeshi goods and products and bring home the urgent necessity to pass the present Bill into a Law on Geographical Indication. The Programme was held at BRAC University.

Professor Md. Ali Ashraf, MP, Former Deputy Speaker, was the chief guest of the programme. Among others, there were S.U. Haider, President, Banglacraft, Maleka Khan and Shahid Hussain Shamim of Banglacraft, and Dr. Shahdeen Malik, Director of the School of Law, BRAC University.

Abdur Rouf, Registrar, Ministry of Industries, also spoke at the seminar. He commented that the Geographical Indication Law was a vital necessity in order to protect our goods. He also said that if the basic equipments needed to produce such goods were patented, then the next step to protection would be seeking GI status for the products.

In her keynote address on the proposed Law, Mahua Zahur, a lecturer of the School of Law, BRACU, commented that it was no use blaming other countries for taking away our goods. If we do nothing to protect them, it is our fault. She urged the government to pass the Bill as soon as possible.

Shahid Hussain Shamim gave the audience a detailed view of the meaning and importance of Geographical Indication and what products needed to be protected under this issue. Dr. Shahdeen Malik commented that such laws are vital to the recognition of Bangladeshi goods and the process to speed up the passing of effective and good laws needed attention.

Ishfaq Ilahi Chowdhury, Registrar of BRAC University, thanked the BU Law Club and Banglacraft for organising such a seminar and highlighting this issue. He commented that the School of Law at BRAC University was a strong voice against injustices and actively involved in social movements, especially the BU Law Club.

(The writer is an Associate Professor, School of Law, BRAC University) Source: The Daily Sun, Dhaka, 22 January 2013; link: http://daily-sun.com/details_Discussion-on-geographical-indication-and-what-needs-to-be-done_387_1_19_1_1.html 

Selection of Student-Volunteers for HRLC's 2nd Batch

The Human Rights Law Clinic at UNESCO Madanjeet Singh South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies is pleased to announce names of selected Student-Volunteers for the second batch (January to June 2013).

An Orientation Session is scheduled on 12 January 2013 from 3:30pm to 5:00pm.

Human Rights Development

Forced disappearance key challenge
Recognises government

Diplomatic Correspondent

Recognising that forced disappearance is one key challenge to improving the human rights situation, the government yesterday agreed to include it in a report for submission to UNHRC at the end of January.

Sultana Kamal, a former adviser to a caretaker government, told this to journalists after emerging from a national consultation on “Bangladesh's 2nd cycle of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) 2013” at the foreign ministry.

This was the second time that the consultation, attended by Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, some 28 civil, law enforcing and military officials and around 40 non-government organisation (NGO) representatives, was held seeking suggestions on the report's preparation.

The 193 United Nations members have to submit their respective reports to declare what actions they took to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfill their human rights obligations.

Sultana Kamal, executive director of Ain o Salish Kendra, said the government also mentioned of corruption as another challenge. The issues of Bishwajit and Limon came up but there was no discussion on extra judicial killings, she said.

The government claimed that the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) peace accord's implementation was progressing on the right tracks, she said.

However, the land settlement issue was still unresolved, the local authority was yet to be handed over power while the army still remained deployed in CHT. “We have categorically put forward our differences in opinion,” she said.

The consultation sources said the NGO representatives strongly voiced to include some important issues in the report.

These include incidents of violence against women, situation of children and child labour, civil and political rights, governance, corruption, issue of brutal killing of Bishwajit and torture and harassment on Limon.

Despite the government's good works, including in legislature, to improve the human rights situation, the ground reality is not so encouraging due to a huge gap between laws and their implementation, they observed.

The government claimed tremendous achievements in improving the human rights situation in the last four years due to enactment of necessary laws and effective steps for their implementation, said the sources.

Saida Muna Tanseem, director general (UN & Human Rights) at the foreign ministry, who gave a presentation on the report's preparation, told the journalists that the 10,000-word report would be inclusive of all important issues.

The government will convene a final consultation, likely in this month's third week, before submitting the report, said Saida.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) fixed April 29 to review Bangladesh's report. NGOs and National Human Rights Commission already submitted their reports to UNHRC in November 2011.

The UPR, a state-driven process under the UNHCR's auspices, will assess the reports on the extent states respect their human rights obligations.

Source: The Daily Star, 03 Janury 2013; link: http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=263616

Human Rights Summer School

Experience and realization of a Participant 

By Akramul Islam 

The Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP) organized 13^th session of Human Rights Summer School (HRSS) from 11 to 23 December 2012 at PROSHIKA HRDC, Koitta, Manikgonj.

This year’s theme was “Human Rights and Critically Disadvantage People.” I was one of participants and it was my great opportunity to accomplish myself with the training provided through the HRSS. 
There were 47 Participants from Law Schools in Bangladesh and a Guest Participant from the United kingdom.  

HRSS is an extensive training opportunities for young students- it included lecture sessions, interactions, field works, group discussions, and presentations.

The availability of the eminent jurists and scholars as speakers and presenters was a great opportunity for the young learners which opened avenues not only to learn from them; it also facilitated to share our views on issues, findings, and put forward queries to meet our respective thrust in various issues on human rights and law.

The pro-active learning by doing methodology helps us to experiment a different mean and way of learning left behind traditional learning methodology.

To conform to the declared theme of the training, HRSS tried to make orientation about the critically disadvantage community of the society who have been pushed to a situation of mere survival with their dignity being compromised at every instance of their existence.

For better understanding of their plights, the program included a visit to the field to explore the reality and relate with our theoretical lessons.

It was horrific for us to come across how rights of marginalized people are being violated and exploited by society’s power structural mechanism.

There is lack of awareness on own right as well among individual concerned.

For ensuring justice for this disadvantaged group, it is the duty of state actors to create an atmosphere where individual will have an easy access to justice- without being obstructed by any difficulties.

However, the experience shows us that the cry for access to justice for socially downtrodden people is far away form the reality as they can not afford to pay lawyers to realize their rights which ultimately contribute to violation of human rights.

Moreover, the reality is that the existing mechanisms manipulate their mindset in such a way that the deprived people are unwilling to know about their own rights and unfortunately they compromise with their “fortune” although being deprived of rights and getting marginalized.

The realization of us is that justice cannot be ensured at root level without proper institutional arrangements. That’s why it is the reason, we experienced, that the people at the grassroots are forced to rely on traditional justice system yet rather than the formal justice system. And thus they are denied of true justice.

Now, we do understand that to become a Lawyer, we have to go to the depth and root of the law for understanding the norms of the Law.

The black letters of the Law in the book must be applied in the field and we have to prepare ourselves to challenge the status quo of the society.

We want to be catalyst to change the society, the sentinels of human rights, and advocate for promotion and protection of human rights. 

Akramul Islam is a Student at the Department of Law, University of Dhaka and Volunteer at the Human Rights Law Clinic (HRLC) at UNESCO Madanjeet Singh South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (UMSAILS) in Dhaka.

[The group photo is a courtesy of Mr. Akramul Islam].

Bangladesh Human Rights Situation in 2012

Editorial- Govt's Human Rights record- It needs marked improvement

Though Bangladesh was being rated positively by international financial agencies and the media for its successes in the socio-economic sector in 2012, the human rights scenario remains its Achilles heel.

A report released by the human rights organisation Ain O Shalish Kendra, ASK, shows that overall the human rights situation was rather dismal in the year that was.

Particular mention has been made of the sudden eruptions of communal tension in September that saw the destruction of Buddhist temples, monasteries and houses in Ramu, Teknaf, Ukhia in southern districts of Cox's Bazaar. In addition, there were also some attacks on another community in Sitakunda and Patiya in Chittagong as well as in the south-western districts of Bagerhat, Jenidah and the northern district of Dinajpur.

In the New Year, we do not want to see such incidents repeated in any form or scale.

On the gender front, violence against women continued with more than 1100 rapes. Incidents of gender-related violence also lay behind the murder of more than 260 women as well as one and a half dozen suicides.

Social sources of violence apart, citizens were often subjected to violence at the hands of the law-enforcement agencies.

Though there was a decline in the number of custodial deaths and extra-judicial murders, disappearances emerged as a major concern for law and order as well as citizens' security.

Contrary to expectations in a democracy, suppression of political dissent resulting in mass arrests, police violence against street demonstrations, denial of space to political opponents to a large extent eclipsed the government's image. Taking recourse to the Section 144 to stop the opposition from holding its political programmes leaves a lot to be desired about dealing appropriately with the opposition.

Leaving behind the failures of the past year, as we would like to look forward to the next with fresh hope, people expect that the government would improve its records on human rights in a marked way.

Thereby the government will be able to present a cleaner image before the electorate at this fag end of its current tenure.

Source: The Daily Star, Dhaka, 02 Januray 2013; link: http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=263431

Bangladesh Human Rights in 2012

Human rights situation alarming, says ASK
Staff Correspondent

Dhaka based rights watchdog Ain O Salish Kendra at a press briefing on Monday said that the overall human rights situation in 2012 was ‘alarming’ while the law and order situation in the country was ‘frustrating.’
‘...the overall human rights situation in the year was not satisfactory,’ the ASK executive director, Sultana Kamal, told the briefing on ‘Human Rights Situation 2012 : ASK’s Evaluation’ held at Dhaka Reporters’ Unity in the capital.
The ASK expressed concerned over continued extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, torture and death in police custody, rights violations of minority communities and border violence and killing by the Indian Border Security Force.
The organisation urged the government to strengthen the National Human Rights Commission in order to improve the rights situation.
Sultana Kamal and ASK’s director (investigation) Nur Khan described the overall human rights situations based on the reports complied through their investigations and on the information they received through different national media.
The ASK praised the government for implementing different laws and rules.
But the report said that the number of extrajudicial killing increased to 91 in 2012 from 84 in 2011.
ASK report said the number of enforced disappearance rose to 34 in 2012 from 30 in 2011.
Sultana Kamal said that the victims’ families raised allegation against law enforcers. particularly the Rapid Action Battalion.
She also expressed concern over torture and killing of journalists and said that 442 journalists were victimised.
Of those incidents, five including Sagar Sarwar and Mehrun Runi were killed while 74 were harassed or tortured by the law enforcers while 87 by goons and 72 by the political activists.
In 2012, 84 people were killed and 10,525 were injured in 595 political clashes while the number of such incidents was 375 in 2011.
ASK said that 165 political demonstrations were stopped by ordering Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in 2012.
The ASK critisied the BSF for killing 48 people and injuring 106 people while they abducted 140 despite repeated assurance from the Indian government to stop such incidents.
The report said that 126 people were lynched by mobs.
The report also mentioned the incidents of the shooting of Limon Hossain by the RAB and continued harassment of his family members.
Violence against women topped the tally of rights violation in 2012 with 1,008 incidents of rape, 538 incidents of dowry-related violence, 68 incidents of acid violence and 428 incidents of stalking.
Violence continued in the Chittagong Hill Tracts over land dispute and other problems, the reports said.

Source: The New Age, Dhaka, 01 January 2013; link: http://newagebd.com/detail.php?date=2013-01-01&nid=35305

Refugee Law Moot Court Competition

University of Dhaka becomes champion 

 The University of Dhaka has bagged the Championship Trophy in the First ELCOP Refugee Law Moot Court Competition held in Dhaka on 28-29 December 2012. 

It was organized by Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP). 

The competition was participated by nine Law Schools from Bangladesh. The University of Dhaka topped the list defeating BRAC University in the final. 

The participating universities are: the University of Dhaka, University of Chittagong, University of Rajshahi, Jagannath University, BRAC University, Northern University Bangladesh, Southeast University, Eastern University and Daffodil International University.  

The theme of the competition was International Refugee Law. 

The panel of judges included Professor M. Shah Alam, Chairman (Acting), Law Commission, Mr. Justice Syed Muhammad Dastagir Hossain, Professor M. Rafiqul Islam of Macquarie University, Retired Judge AKM Zaheer Ahmed, Professor Sumaiya Khair of the University of Dhaka, and Ms. Fahmida Karim of UNHCR. 

Md. Shariful Haque of the University of Chittagong became the Best Mooter. The same University also bagged the Best Memorial Trophy. Jagannath University was adjudged with the "Best Rebellious Lawyer" trophy.

Source: ELCOP Press Release.