How Was Tarique Rahman’s UN Mission

Tarique Rahman has returned home after participating in the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. He delivered a speech of at least twenty-one minutes in this session. Although domestic themes repeatedly returned to the discourse, he occasionally interspersed them with global issues. He highlighted the compatibility of his party BNP’s 31-point programme with the SDGs. While raising the issue of climate justice, financing and adaptation support, in efforts to build domestic capacity, he detailed his government’s specific plans to protect the country’s environment. On migration, he expressed hope for stronger global cooperation to protect migrants’ rights, dignity and welfare. Citing advances in science, technology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and social media, he called for effective UN policies to make the benefits available to all, regardless of country or ethnicity.
In the wake of US President Donald Trump’s arrogant statement and general criticism of the UN, Tarique Rahman, like other world leaders, expressed his desire to see the UN as “the centre of establishing a consensual world community that respects each other’s independence and sovereignty”. In this context, he said, “Bangladesh is steadfast in the principle of multilateralism in maintaining international peace and security.” Regarding the establishment of peace in the world, he boldly said, “The tendency of various countries of the world to divert development budgets to the military sector is an obstacle to world peace.” Although he highlighted various global and domestic issues in his speech, it seems that he was greatly influenced by the recent trend of domestic politics. As a result, he spoke loudly in favour of the July Uprising, but vehemently criticised the pre-July government. In a way, this indirectly exposed the weakness of Bangladesh as a state. Although he paid tribute to the martyred freedom fighters of the Liberation War of Bangladesh, he did not mention the sacrifice of the wounded freedom fighters or the valiant role of the freedom fighters. Even though he talked about his government’s commitment to women’s education or employment, or Bangladesh’s strong commitment to the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ programme, he did not mention the loss of dignity of millions of women during the Liberation War of Bangladesh. Although he mentioned water conservation on the issue of climate change, he did not call for any regional initiative for the integrated distribution of water from a common river.

He spoke in line with previous governments without detailing the terrible humanitarian, economic, social and security crisis that has arisen due to the forcibly displaced people from Myanmar taking refuge in Bangladesh. He then sought an effective arrangement from the United Nations and the international community for a final settlement. In addition to his speech at the General Assembly, Tarique Rahman convened a meeting on the sidelines for the return of the Rohingya population of Myanmar. The Vice President of Gambia attended that meeting as a co-sponsor. Bangladesh presented five-point demands for the repatriation of this population. On the surface, these five points amount to direct interference in Myanmar’s internal affairs. Whether it is appropriate under the UN Charter for a member state to make such a demand requires deep consideration. The same is true when we consider the provisions of the Bangladesh Constitution. Although the infiltration and taking shelter in Bangladesh of displaced Myanmar citizens has many dimensions in the domestic and international arena, it is essentially a bilateral issue to resolve between the two countries. For Bangladesh, it is directly related to national security. This population also crossed the border and entered Bangladesh in the eighties and nineties. On both occasions, Bangladesh managed to send them back through bilateral negotiations and agreements. On the contrary, in 2017, for some unknown reasons, Bangladesh preferred to take this issue to the international forum and eventually made it a tool of geopolitics. This is why the crisis is intensifying day by day.
This is perhaps the weakest aspect of Tarique Rahman’s speech at the UNGA, and eventually that of his foreign policy. That is why, despite the many beautiful and ornamented sentences in his speech, I am apprehensive about the subtleties of Bangladesh’s foreign relations. 
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The writer is a former Bangladeshi Ambassador