আমি জানতাম না যে বাংলাদেশ পৃথিবীতে দ্বিতীয় দেশ যেখানে all female police unit আছে..। Remarks by Assistant Secretary Robert O. Blake, Jr. Bureau of South and Central Asia Affairs U.S. Department of State San Diego World Affairs Council September 30, 2010 San Diego, CA “South Asia’s Unheralded Stories” Let me begin with Bangladesh, a country of increasing regional stature and strategic importance to the United States. Though it is the size of Wisconsin, Bangladesh has a population of approximately 160 million people – more than Russia or Japan. Indeed, one in every fifty people on the planet is a Bangladeshi. Despite its impressive social and economic progress, the image of Bangladesh for most Americans remains frozen as a country facing desperate poverty. While Bangladesh remains a poor country, it has made impressive progress since those dark early days after its independence in 1971. The United Nations last week held a Summit in New York to measure the progress developing countries are making to meet the Millennium Development goals by 2015. Bangladesh, and also Nepal, were among six countries honored this year for outstanding achievement in meeting Millennium Development targets. Bangladesh has reduced child mortality by more than two-thirds, and is on track to meet their 2015 target well ahead of schedule. They have also been particularly successful at reducing the number of chronically food insecure people- from 40 to 27 million- and at reducing gender inequality in schools and in the labor force. Many of these successes have been achieved in part because of the $5 billion that the U.S. and the US Agency for International Development have invested in Bangladesh over the past four decades. Steady economic growth over the last two decades has been another important factor in lifting millions of Bangladeshis out of poverty. Few people know that despite the global recession, the Bangladeshi economy has continued to maintain an economic growth rate of 5-6% per year for almost two decades. Bangladesh is now the world’s third-largest exporter of ready-made garments – I’d be willing to bet that the clothes that a number of you are wearing today were made by some of the millions of Bangladeshi garment workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are women. Indeed, with a female Prime Minister, opposition leader, Foreign Minister and Agriculture Minister, it should come as no surprise that women’s empowerment and girl’s education rank high on the nation’s list of priorities. The country recently dispatched to Haiti its first all-female police unit of UN peacekeepers, only the second country to have such a unit. The 160-woman contingent is assisting victims of sexual violence in earthquake-devastated Haiti, and is one small part of the more than 10,000 Bangladeshi peacekeepers who serve in ten UN peacekeeping missions worldwide –more than any other UN member state. Today, Bangladesh is a secular democracy, with a vibrant civil society, and a history of religious and ethnic tolerance. The national elections that brought Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to power in January 2009 were hailed as the freest and fairest in the nation’s history. Just as encouraging, her government has made improved relations with its neighbors, particularly India, a high priority. Her government has also taken a strong stand against terrorism, arresting and capturing key leaders of a number of small extremist groups, including the JMB, which masterminded a series of co-ordinated bomb blasts throughout the country in 2005. Bangladesh also can be proud of its vibrant civil society, which has produced such outstanding global citizens as Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, whose Grameen Bank was a pioneer of the concept of “microcredit”, providing small loans to tens of millions of Bangladeshis, especially women, who possess little or no collateral. Another proud son of Bangladesh, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founded the world’s largest non-governmental organization – BRAC – which employs more than 100,000 people, operates schools, provides basic health care and offers microcredit to the poor. Like Grameen Bank, BRAC has expanded its operations far outside the boundaries of Bangladesh, most notably in the form of a robust aid presence in war-torn Afghanistan, operating over 2,000 schools and providing loans to more than 100,000 households. More recently, grass-roots organizations like the Bangladesh Youth Leadership Council have worked to get college students from diverse backgrounds to work together to improve the lives of the country ’s desperately poor. Bangladesh’s significant diaspora, like those from other South Asian countries, has also made substantial contributions to the country’s developments. Members of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States send home over $1.5 billion a year. Just as significantly, increasing numbers of Bangladeshis who have lived and studied abroad are returning home to invest, share knowledge, and build bridges between our two countries. Moreover, Bangladesh is grappling and cooperating with the U.S. on some of the great issues of our time, including food security, global health, and climate change, which will have implications far beyond its borders.