How many people in Bangladesh can truly say they enjoy two of our most fundamental rights: access to justice and access to quality education?
On the surface, the two engagements I attended in one day may have seemed separate. One focused on legal aid and the right to justice; the other on helping out-of-school children return to learning. But by the end of the day, the connection between them felt very clear.
Across Bangladesh, these rights and opportunities are still unevenly distributed, especially for communities that are socially disadvantaged, wrongfully detained, or financially constrained. For many people, justice is not simply about the law, and education is not simply about the classroom. Both are about dignity, opportunity, and the ability to build a better future.
At the annual Legal Aid Day, I had the privilege of meeting dedicated representatives from legal aid centres and organisations working tirelessly to stand beside marginalised communities. Their work reflects the positive momentum within Bangladesh’s legal aid sector, where government-supported services, district legal aid offices, the Supreme Court Legal Aid Office, labour legal aid cells, prisons, and the national toll-free helpline 16699 are helping make justice more practical and reachable for those who need it most.
Later, I saw another side of that same promise through Surovi’s Ability Based Accelerated Learning (ABAL) project. With the current primary school dropout rate at 16.25%, the need for action is urgent. Through 67 child-friendly accelerated learning centres, ABAL is helping 2,000 out-of-school children in Dhaka’s urban slums return to learning, supported by local communities and city partners.
The day reminded me that access to justice and access to education are not separate ambitions. When people can claim their rights and children can claim their future, Bangladesh moves closer to equality in its truest sense.
