At the United Nations General Assembly later this month, when Prime Minister Tarique Rahman speaks, he will enter a domain in which his parents have already spoken on behalf of what Bangladesh needed from the world.
This will add yet another page to a long political history that dates back almost half a century.
In 1980, President Ziaur Rahman addressed the United Nations at a special session which was dominated by the oil crisis and the growing economic gap between developed and developing countries. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, meanwhile, first addressed the General Assembly in 1991, after the BNP’s election victory brought her to office as PM, and returned to the UN podium in 2005 during her third term.
Now Tarique Rahman is poised to make his speech during the 81st session of the General Assembly when Bangladesh will take the chairmanship.
It was different every time. The international system was different as well. There is, however, one thing in common: The need for Bangladesh to exercise its agency to define and pursue its national interest.
Ziaur Rahman expressed it in the language of 1980.
The oil shock had exposed how vulnerable poorer countries were to decisions made elsewhere. In his UN address, he questioned the imbalance between huge global military expenditure and declining development assistance. He linked international peace with the economic divide between rich and poor countries and called for changes to the global trade, financial, and development system.
For Bangladesh, he placed agriculture, rural development, and food production high on the national agenda. At the same time, he pressed developed countries for better market access, more development assistance, and debt relief.
His address was summed up in one phrase: “Self-reliance.” It was not a call for isolation. Ziaur Rahman was arguing for a Bangladesh that could rely more on its own productive capacity while working with other countries to secure a fairer international order.
Khaleda Zia’s first UN address came in a very different Bangladesh. The country had just returned to parliamentary democracy. The available material from her 1991 speech points to concerns that were immediate and national: Democratic governance, the sharing of common river waters, recovery from the April cyclone, rural development and poverty reduction, and greater attention to women’s education and maternal and child health.
The subjects were largely domestic. The forum was global. That was part of the point. Bangladesh was taking its own problems to an international audience, rather than allowing the country to be defined solely by the crises it faced.
By 2005, Khaleda Zia was speaking from a different position again. Her address covered UN reform, terrorism, human rights, development, the interests of least developed countries, and peacekeeping. Bangladesh was still making demands of the international system, but it was also presenting itself as a country with responsibilities within that system.
She pointed to Bangladesh’s contribution to UN peacekeeping and its role in international efforts on peace and security. The message was broader than development assistance: Bangladesh had interests to defend, but it also had something to contribute.
That thread helps put Tarique Rahman’s “Bangladesh First” policy in perspective. The phrase is new. The underlying instinct is older.
Ziaur Rahman spoke of self-reliance. Khaleda Zia placed democracy, development, sovereignty, and Bangladesh’s international responsibilities at the centre of her UN interventions. Tarique Rahman is now putting national interest more explicitly at the heart of his foreign-policy language.
There are parallels elsewhere. India’s Nehru-Gandhi family produced three generations of prime ministers. Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike family saw political power pass across generations as well. But political inheritance does not come with a script. Every generation meets a different world.
That is where Tarique Rahman’s UN appearance becomes more than a family milestone. The world in which he will speak has almost nothing in common with the world in which Ziaur Rahman operated in 1980. Bangladesh is not the young nation overly dependent on foreign aid that it was then. Its economy, diplomatic interests, and international role have changed. So have the questions confronting it, from climate change and economic security to shifting geopolitical alliances and the Rohingya crisis.
The old question of national agency remains, but its meaning has become more complicated. A country cannot put its interests first simply by looking inward. The interests of Bangladesh are such that they are related to what goes on outside the country. Protecting national interests has become more about managing competing influences.
That is the test of any political legacy. Ziaur Rahman used the UN to argue for greater economic self-reliance and a stronger voice for developing countries. Khaleda Zia used it to speak about Bangladesh’s democratic transition, development concerns and responsibilities in international affairs. Tarique Rahman now has the opportunity to give his own meaning to “Bangladesh First.”
His speech will inevitably be compared with those of his parents. But the more useful comparison may be with the country itself. Bangladesh will be presiding over the General Assembly as Tarique Rahman speaks. The country that once went to the UN asking for greater room to develop is now in a position to shape part of the institution’s agenda.
That is perhaps the clearest measure of how much has changed since 1980. The family’s UN history, in that sense, is also a condensed history of Bangladesh’s changing place in the world. The central idea has survived, but the circumstances have not.
Jobair Babu is a filmmaker, columnist, and broadcaster.
