Bangladesh: State obligation to provide Essential services

by Razu Ahmed    June 27, 2008

Bangladesh: State obligation to provide ES

The commitment and obligation of the state to provide basic services to its citizens is enshrined in the constitution of Bangladesh. The Constitution mandates that: "it shall be a fundamental responsibility of the state to attain, through planned economic growth, a constant increase of productive forces and a steady improvement in the material and cultural standard of living of the people, with a view to securing to its citizens- (a) the provision of the basic necessities of life, including food, clothing, shelter, education and medical care (Article: 15)". Bangladesh is responsible for creating an environment for its citizens that allows them to improve their quality of life through access to health, education and other basic services. The right to education in Bangladesh is written into the Constitution, a right for all children to receive basic primary and lower secondary education.

Apart from constitutional mandates, Government is also obligated to adopt necessary legal and budgetary provisions to provide basic services to its people as it has ratified and showed highest commitment to uphold different international covenants, charters and proposals including the UN. For example, Article 26 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, formulated in 1948, was an added incentive to this rights perspective which unambiguously states that “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory’. State commitment to health care has often been repeated. Article 12 of the International Convention on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (1966) states that “the state is obliged to attain the highest attainable standard of health’ for its populations. States are required to adopt appropriate legislative, administrative, budgetary, judicial, promotional, and other measures towards the full realization of this right. In 2002, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights issued a General Comment declaring that ‘The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, affordable, physically accessible, safe and acceptable water for personal and domestic uses’. It also indicated that governments have a duty to respect, protect, and work to achieve this right progressively and that the right extends to providing the underlying preconditions of health including access to safe and potable water and hygienic sanitation.

Essential services need to be provided free of charge to ensure greatest equity and access for poor communities. The experience of elimination of direct user fees is not new to South Asia. Sri Lanka eliminated tuition fees from kindergarten to university in 1945. User fees in health were abolished in 1951. Bangladesh has introduced a law for free and compulsory primary education, and provides girls with free education up to secondary school. India has even made a constitutional amendment to guarantee free and compulsory education, but in practice user fees are pervasive.

Sometimes relevant laws and regulations are in place; but insufficient or no allocation of public funds does not ensure the access to services by the people for which the government is constitutionally mandated. Very often, the Constitutional rights of the people of Bangladesh are utterly denied when one takes into account some glaring features of our society: government documents (PRSP, MDG reports and other relevant policy papers) clearly stats that almost 50% people are poor, meaning that these groups of people are “deprived”, “powerless” and “distressed”. This is obviously the violation of Article- 11, 13, 20 of the Constitution. But what does the government do as far as the public spending is concerned? Almost three-fourth of the population has little or no access to primary health services (violation of Article- 20). Where is the budget allocation? More than 50% people are still illiterate (violation of Article- 17 and 17C). Where is the public fund for education? Three-fourth of the population has no access to electricity (violation of Article- 16). Where is the effective budgetary allocation? Examples abound (Barakat: 2003). Hence, public expenditure is the most crucial indicator for analyzing government commitment.

(This article is a research report jointly prepared by Monowar Mostofa and Razu Ahmed)

To read previous story Click: http://www.groundreport.com/Arts_and_Culture/External-Debt-at-the-cost-of-Essential-services-2

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