Bangladesh Human Rights Laws: Parliament Guts Key Protections

Three laws, one direction

In September 2026, Bangladesh's parliament approved three laws that Human Rights Watch says dismantle key protections built up after the fall of Sheikh Hasina's government. The package is the sharpest rewrite of Bangladesh human rights laws since the interim government's 2025 ordinances, cutting the independence of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), weakens how enforced disappearances are investigated, and gives the paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) a new name without the safeguards campaigners had demanded.

The group said in a September 23 statement that the legislation "reversed human rights protections and broken the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party's (BNP) commitments to reform." The interim government that ran Bangladesh between August 2024 and February 2026 had passed ordinances giving the NHRC real investigative power. According to Human Rights Watch, the new government has now written most of that progress out of the law.

The timing is part of the story. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman took office after protesters risked their lives to remove a government responsible for widespread and severe rights violations. "It is deeply alarming to see the new government so quickly following in the abusive footsteps of Sheikh Hasina, because we have seen where this can lead," said Elaine Pearson, Human Rights Watch's Asia director.

A rights commission back on a leash

The deepest change hits the NHRC. Under the Awami League's 2009 law, the commission was a government-friendly body that could only request reports from agencies accused of abuse. The interim government's 2025 ordinance fixed that: it empowered the NHRC to investigate security agencies directly, created a more independent appointments process, and, for the first time, set up a National Preventive Mechanism to inspect detention facilities, as the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture requires.

That ordinance lapsed when the newly elected parliament failed to confirm it. The replacement NHRC law, passed on September 6 after opposition legislators walked out, puts the commission back in something close to its old role. It cannot directly investigate alleged violations by security forces; it can only ask the accused agency for a report. A loosely worded clause seems to let the NHRC open its own inquiry if the agency's response is unsatisfactory, but the appointments process is again under government control, and the commission has lost budgetary and administrative independence. The National Preventive Mechanism has been downgraded too.

The Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) issued a similar warning, stating that the bill "undermines independent human rights oversight" and that a rights body cannot function if it cannot independently investigate the state institutions responsible for the worst violations. Human Rights Watch said the new law appears to fall short of the Paris Principles, the minimum international standard for national human rights institutions.

Disappearances harder to pin on commanders

The second law, the Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Redress Act, passed on the same day. Under the lapsed interim ordinance, the NHRC could investigate disappearance claims and inspect detention facilities, including suspected secret detention sites. The new act takes those powers away. Instead, the government will appoint a different security agency, one not named in the case, to run the investigation. Rights lawyers have flagged the obvious flaw: asking security forces to police themselves rarely produces answers.

The act also rewrites the standard for command responsibility. The earlier rule, drawn from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, held officers liable for violations they should have known about and prevented. The new law demands evidence of a direct order. That is a much higher bar, and it protects senior officers who oversaw abuse without putting orders in writing.

A new name for an old force

The third law deals with the Rapid Action Battalion, the paramilitary force blamed for extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture. The United States sanctioned RAB for serious human rights abuses; seven former senior officers face targeted US sanctions, and several former members are on trial at Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal for alleged crimes against humanity, including enforced disappearance — a UN mission recently reached similar conclusions about state violence in Iran. The BNP had previously called for the force to be dissolved. Human Rights Watch made the same call.

Dissolution did not happen. Parliament passed the Special Response Battalion Act on September 10, moving RAB's personnel, powers, property, and records into a new force called the Special Response Battalion (SRB), which began operating on September 16. The unit's logo reportedly stayed the same, with only the letters RAB swapped out for SRB. Back in May, Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed had suggested that renaming the unit might lead Washington to "reconsider" the sanctions against it. According to Human Rights Watch, the new law contains none of the safeguards, training, oversight, or accountability mechanisms campaigners sought, and it gives the new force fewer protections than the regular police enjoy.

What the rights groups are asking for

Human Rights Watch has called on Bangladesh's international partners to push Dhaka on the operating rules for the SRB, which have not yet been written: rigorous human rights vetting of personnel, independent external oversight, safeguards around arrest and detention, preservation of RAB's records and evidence, and an end to the routine deployment of seconded military personnel in civilian policing. It also urged the United States to keep sanctions on the renamed entity — a call that echoes a UN report this week flagging state repression across 32 countries until real human rights protections and accountability are in place, and called on the European Union and the United Kingdom to raise concerns about the new government's record.

This is also the first real test of what Bangladesh human rights laws will look like under the BNP. FORUM-ASIA put the risk in institutional terms: changing names and structures means little if the new bodies repeat the old accountability gaps. Three laws in three weeks is the evidence the watchdogs are reading.