Bangladesh has been praised widely in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) by the UN member states in Geneva, Law Minister Anisul Haq has said.
"You all may hear what they have said. 111 countries took part during the review of Bangladesh. More than 90% praised Bangladesh's progress," he said at the briefing held virtually after the review on Monday.
Slovakia, and Canada were critical on Bangladesh while US, UK and Belgium raised the issue of general elections.
The UPR of the United Nations Human Rights Council is a peer review of the human rights records of all 193 UN Member States.
Established in March 2006 by the UN General Assembly in resolution 60/251, the UPR is designed to prompt, support, and expand the promotion and protection of human rights in every country.
Since the first periodic review in 2008, all 193 UN Member States have been reviewed three times. The fourth cycle of review began in November 2022, at the 41st session of the UPR Working Group. Bangladesh earlier faced the review in February 2009, April 2013, and May 2018.
This time due to the upcoming general elections, there had been lots of media hype.
The review process is open to all as the documents that the countries placed to the UN for review had been posted online long before.
The review was also broadcast live online.
The law minister, who led Bangladesh delegation, said he had reiterated the government's position on holding free and fair elections.
"US, UK and Belgium spoke about a free, fair and peaceful elections. They didn't make any strong criticism to Bangladesh's human rights situation," he said.
Health condition of opposition leader Begum Khaled Zia also came up.
"I have told the truth and facts. BNP has to accept the truth, shunning lies," he said.
Replying to a question, whether the countries have accepted Bangladesh's reply to their queries, the law minister said: "We cannot say whether they have accepted or not. But you have seen that they didn't ask questions in return of our replies to their queries."
The member states also made recommendations for Bangladesh.
Those include strengthening cooperation with the UN human rights bodies, strengthening national human rights commission, protection of the persons with disabilities, and training of the law enforcing agencies.
They also recommended working on improving religious toleration and education, and ensuring safe food, migration, elimination of child marriage, improving health in village level and working on combating trafficking in persons.
"Day after tomorrow, we will know exactly how many recommendations we got from the participating countries. And then we will decide on which recommendations we will work with. The UN commission will follow it up in February," the law minister said.
The UPR provides each State the opportunity to regularly report on the actions it has taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to overcome challenges to the enjoyment of human rights; and receive recommendations – informed by multi-stakeholder input and pre-session reports – from UN Member States for continuous improvement.
State Minister for foreign affairs Md Shahriar Alam commended the UN review process and said it brings all countries in the same playing field.
That's the beauty, he said, as the countries like the US also come under scanner for the human rights situation in the review every 4.5 years.
