Don't nominate for UN peacekeeping any RAB, DGFI, or DB personnel until human rights screening mechanism formed: UN
The United Nations has recommended that the government does not nominate for peacekeeping any military or police personnel who served with the Rapid Action Battalion, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence or the Dhaka Metropolitan Police Detective Branch at any previous point, or in any of the BGB battalions deployed to the 2024 protests or previous instances of protests suppressed with use of force.
In a report released by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) today (12 February), it asked the government to first establish an effective and sufficiently independent human rights screening mechanism to ensure that no Bangladeshi personnel deployed to United Nations peace operations or other international missions was subject to credible allegations of international human rights, humanitarian or refugee law violations, or of any instance of sexual exploitation or abuse.
It said the government can agree with the United Nations Department of Peace Operations to hold nominations until such a mechanism has been established.
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In 2021, the US Treasury Department imposed human rights-related sanctions on Bangladesh's elite paramilitary force RAB and seven of its current and former officers, accusing them of being involved in hundreds of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings since 2009.
The next year, in a letter to the UN, 12 international human rights organisations demanded that members of RAB be banned from deployments to the peacekeeping missions.
