Seminar on "Protection of land rights and human rights of both hill and plain land indigenous people: role of state"

Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD) and Bangladesh Adivasi Forum (BAF) jointly organized a seminar on above title on 7 August 2015 at the CIRDAP auditorium Dhaka to raise the issue of indigenous people’s land rights on the occasion of International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. Rights activists Ms Khushi Kabir, coordinator of Nijera Kori, chaired the seminar while the panel discussants were respectively Syed Abul Maksud, columnist and journalist; Professor Dr. Sadeka Halim, former information commissioner; Dr. Dalem Chandra Barmon, Vice Chancellor of Asha University; Dr. Meghna Guhathakurta, executive director of RIB; and Shamsul Huda, executive director of ALRD.

The seminar presented two separate keynote papers, one by Robaet Ferdous, associate professor of mass communication and journalism of Dhaka University, demanded an indigenous people rights act to protect their culture and traditional land rights. On the other hand, Sanjeeb Drong, general secretary of Bangladesh Adivasi Forum, stressed the need for an indigenous community-friendly national policy in his keynote. And the speakers demanded a separate land commission and a separate ministry for the plain land indigenous people.