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Overview
June 2010:
Among the problems Bangladesh faces is sexual harassment euphemistically called "Eve teasing." The country's education ministry made June 13 "Eve Teasing Protection Day."
This followed a rise in suicides among girls. One 13-year-old, Nahfia Akhand Pinky, wrote a suicide note that described onlookers as laughing during her harassment on the street outside her home by a small group of young men. She wrote that "Nobody protested." She hanged herself.
Bangladesh is 89.5 percent Muslim. Religion is said to be a strong part of people's identity in Bangladesh.
An article in the BBC describes victims of sexual harassment as getting "virtually no help from law enforcement agencies. Families of the victims are left feeling hopeless and helpless." Men (fathers perhaps) who have protested the harassment have been murdered.
Harassment is prevalent in schools. The dropout rate among girls has been increasing as means of escape, and, as an escape, parents have been pushing their daughters into an early marriages.
The literacy rate in Bangladesh, according to the CIA Factbook, is 54% for males and 41.4% for females (age 15 and older). Only 27% of the population lives in a rural area.
Another problem: widespread arsenic poisoning, according to the World Health Organization "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history." This occurred after wells were installed in the 1970s to give people greater access to groundwater.
The population has been growing: 144 million in 2005, 158 million today.
Most countries have been improving a little year after year in reducing infant deaths, but in Bangladesh infant mortality has worsened a little since 2008. According to the CIA, infant deaths in Bangladesh before the age of one is 57.78 per 1,000 live births. This compares with 2.32 deaths per 1,000 live births in Singapore, the country with the best infant mortality record.
Bangladesh is much poorer than Singapore. Bangladesh had a per capita GDP in 2009 of $1,600 Singapore's was over $50,000 (CIA World Factbook estimate).
On the Bay of Bengal, between Burma and India. South America. Slightly smaller than Indiana. Tropical and often hot and rainy, with mild winters.
Bangladesh was born in 1971 when Bengali East Pakistan seceded from its union with West Pakistan. About a third of this country floods every year during the monsoon rainy season.
Its full name is the People's Republic of Bangladesh. It is a parliamentary democracy.
Figures unless otherwise stated are from the CIA Factbook.
Factbook: "The economy has grown 5-6% per year since 1996 despite inefficient state-owned enterprises, delays in exploiting natural gas resources, insufficient power supplies, and slow implementation of economic reforms. Bangladesh remains a poor, overpopulated, and inefficiently-governed nation. Although more than half of GDP is generated through the service sector, nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the single-most-important product."
2009: $1,600
2008: $1,500
2007: $1,400
2009: 2.5%
2009: 38.2% of GDP
Industries: cotton textiles, jute, garments, tea processing, paper newsprint, cement, chemical fertilizer, light engineering, sugar
Living in an urban area: 27% (2008)
July 2010:
158 million. Growth rate: 1.274%
July 2008:
153.547 millio
July 2005:
144.3 million
Density estimated for 2005: 1,078 persons per square kilometer.
More leaving than arriving. A net loss of 1.97 persons per 1,000 population
2010: 57.78
2008: 57.45
2005: 62.2
2010: 60.63
SOURCES:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Copyright © 2010 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.