On 2 December 1997, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Peace Accord was signed, giving hope for lasting peace and development for the Indigenous Peoples of the CHT. However, today, as we mark the 25th anniversary of the peace accord, Indigenous Peoples in the CHT in Bangladesh have experienced little to no peace or development.
Over the last 25 years, the natural resources of the hill tracts, which are a hotbed of biodiversity, have been rapidly depleted by land-grabbing, agricultural monoculture, hill-cutting, and stone extraction by private corporations, the government and the military. Indigenous Peoples, who have protected the land of the CHT and its natural resources for generations, face continuous eviction, with land for growing food and living on rapidly becoming scarce.
IWGIA has been working in solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples in the CHT since the 1980s. In fact, it was the first group of Indigenous Peoples in Asia that IWGIA engaged with as a response to the massive and decades-long human rights violations and killings experienced by the Indigenous Peoples in the area.
IWGIA calls on the Government of Bangladesh to prioritize all efforts to implement the most crucial parts of the CHT Peace Accord to end the human rights violations that the Indigenous Peoples of the CHT have faced for decades and are still facing today, and to ensure that they are allowed to live their self-determined lives on their lands in peace, without fear of violence or eviction.
Find our more about IWGIA's work on the CHT here:
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