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Bangladesh

Country Director: Mosharraf Hossain
Programme start: 1994
Population: 153m
% living on less than US$1 a day: 41%
Adult life expectancy at birth: 63 years

ADD Bangladesh website

Contact information

4th National Convention on the Democratic Rights of Persons with Disabilities

ADD Bangladesh, in partnerhsip with national, district and grassroots organisations and non-government organisations working with disabled people, organised the 4th National Convention.  It was held on June 12th at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar where, among other topics, disabled people's right to vote was discussed.  These links take you to the BBC, Bangaldesh Newpapers the Daily Star and the New Nation for more information.

In Bangladesh there are approximately 7.6 million disabled people who are eligible to vote - but are unable to because of inaccessible polling stations, voting laws and negative attitudes.  ADD work to change this includes: sensitising and influencing political parties to include disability issues in their election manifestos; calling on civil society to raise their voice in support of registration of disabled voters and making polling stations accessible.

Right to vote

ADD Bangladesh has also been working closely with the Bangladesh Election Commission and Election Working Group. The Election Working Group is a country-wide network of 33 NGOs working on a civic and voter awareness campaign with six themes - disability is one of them.

One of ADD Bangladesh's successes has been in raising citizens' awareness of disabled people's right to vote.  In the most recent local government elections, 64 disabled people stood as independent candidates and 16 of them were elected - this was the first time ever that disabled people had been elected as representatives of their communities in local government.

The Bangladesh National Grassroots Disability Federation was formed in July 2004, as a culmination of 10 years' of work by ADD to help build capacity of disabled people’s organisations.  The Federation speaks for the disability rights movement with a united voice and to raise issues of exclusion and marginalisation at a national level.  Leaders of the Federation now receive additional training so that they can help build the capacity of other disabled people and raise the levels of skills and confidence within the movement.  At present they can scarcely keep up with the demand from neighbouring districts where other disabled people are asking for help to establish their own self-help groups and organisations.

In 2005 the Federation successfully lobbied the Minister of Transport for the reservation of four seats and a 50% fare reduction for disabled people on all public transport.