A country that has lived through secret detention sites, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the slaughter of July protesters does not strengthen its human rights architecture by reviving a weaker watchdog. But the parliament, elected two months ago, has done precisely that by passing the bill that repeals the interim government’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Ordinance, 2025 and revives the old framework. The government says this is a temporary step, that more scrutiny and stakeholder consultation are needed. This defence is not convincing. The 2025 reform process itself was built on consultations involving more than 600 stakeholders, and even organisations that later criticised parts of the ordinance argued for amendment, not wholesale rollback. Consultation can justify refinement, but it does not justify a return to a structure with a much longer record of dependency and failure.
The difference between the 2009 act and the 2025 ordinance was not cosmetic. Under the NHRC Act, 2009, the appointment structure was dominated by state power, with the speaker, law minister, home minister, Law Commission chair, cabinet secretary, and two MPs shaping the process. The ordinance project moved in a more credible direction. It required public advertisement, verification, shortlisting, and interviews, and it opened space for consultation with civil society and relevant stakeholders. Most importantly, in Section 3(2), it stated in express terms that the commission would not remain under any ministry or division. That was a serious attempt at building institutional distance from the executive. Yes, later changes drew justified criticism for reintroducing some bureaucratic influence. But that only proved the ordinance needed correction, not that it should be discarded entirely and the older, weaker law should be restored.
The real issue, however, was never ceremonial independence—it was operational power. Under Section 18 of the 2009 act, allegations against disciplined forces were effectively trapped within the state. The commission could ask the government for a report and then recommend action. That is not independent investigation. That is administrative petitioning. The ordinance framework was fundamentally different. It expressly brought security forces within the commission’s mandate, empowered the NHRC to demand records and cooperation, allowed it to create investigation teams, barred the accused institution from investigating its own personnel, permitted urgent interim protection measures, and authorised inspections of places of detention without prior permission from the controlling authority. A human rights commission is tested where abuse is most likely, not where the government is least embarrassed. On that test, the ordinance was plainly more independent and more effective.
That conclusion is reinforced by the history of the NHRC under the older law. Bangladesh’s commission remained stuck at B status under the international accreditation process, with long standing concerns about weak powers, an executive-heavy selection process, and dependency on the state. The record was equally dispiriting in practice. In the killing of Akramul Haque, the commission visited the family and wrote to the home ministry, but did not carry out a robust public inquiry of its own. In the case of Shahidul Alam, a formal complaint detailing custodial torture was submitted to the NHRC. Yet, consistent with its practice under the 2009 act, the commission did not undertake an independent investigation, instead operating within a framework that largely depended on seeking reports from the government. Amnesty noted that, during the government crackdown on the July protesters in 2024, the then NHRC chair responded with a restrained statement, saying the situation was “unfortunate and a violation of human rights.” That is the central lesson of the old framework. When the state is accused, a structurally timid human rights watchdog becomes an institutional spectator.
The collective resignation of the entire NHRC after the 2025 ordinance was repealed should therefore not be dismissed as theatre. It was an institutional distress signal. The members effectively acknowledged that once the legal foundation of their appointment had been extinguished, remaining in office would only normalise regression. Their open letter matters because it was not merely self-vindication but a warning that victims of enforced disappearances and participants in the July uprising could now face a weaker avenue for protection and accountability. Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury’s role gives that warning additional weight. He is the judge who led the High Court bench that struck down the 16th Amendment in a landmark judgment (subsequently upheld by the Appellate Division), and later chaired the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, whose final report documented secret detention sites, heard hundreds of victims and relatives, summoned officers, and helped shape the newer accountability framework. Sweeping aside a commission led by such a figure was not a neutral tidy up. It was a political signal.
The timing makes the rollback even more indefensible. The OHCHR fact-finding report found reasonable grounds to believe that the Awami League government and its security and intelligence apparatus committed serious violations during the July-August protests in 2024, including hundreds of extrajudicial killings, mass arrests, arbitrary detention, and torture. Bangladesh also continues to live with the unfinished moral and legal wreckage of enforced disappearances. In that setting, the need was not for a commission that must lean on government reports when security forces are accused, but for a commission with unannounced access to detention sites, public credibility in appointments, interim protection powers, and legal authority strong enough to make the state answer to victims. If ever there was a moment to strengthen the NHRC, it was after July 2024, and now when there is again a political government. Reinstating a weaker model at precisely this moment sends the wrong signal.
The takeaways here are stark. First, legal design matters. A human rights commission cannot be independent in practice if its appointment process, investigative powers, and access to coercive institutions are structured around executive comfort. Second, the government’s consultation argument fails on its own terms. If the ordinance had defects, it could have been amended clause by clause in public. Repeal was the most regressive option available. Third, the resignation of the whole commission shows that this was not perceived, even by those at the centre of the institution, as a benign technical adjustment.
The way forward is clear. Parliament should publish a clause-by-clause comparison of the old law, the repealed ordinance, and any proposed replacement, and then legislate transparently with the victims’ groups, July survivors, lawyers, rights defenders, journalists, and minority communities in the room. Any new law worthy of Bangladesh must preserve the ordinance’s strongest features: explicit freedom from executive control, a transparent and plural appointment process, full jurisdiction over security forces without prior government permission, unannounced inspection powers, interim protective authority, and protected institutional autonomy. The 2025 ordinance was imperfect, and some of its later dilution deserved criticism. But imperfect reform is still reform. Reinstating a weaker NHRC after the gravest abuses the country has suffered in recent memory is regression dressed up as prudence.
Khan Khalid Adnan is advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, fellow at the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and head of the chamber at Khan Saifur Rahman and Associates in Dhaka.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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