Chittagong Hill Tracts

This conference was held in Copenhagen on May 31 and June 1, following up the earlier work of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, an international body of experts which published a series of reports on the governance and human rights problems of the CHT between 1991 and 2000. The territory had been administered separately during the colonial era, but since independence it has been effectively under the control of the military. Arrangements for local self-government, agreed in 1997, were not implemented, and immigration of settlers from the rest of Bangladesh have progressively diluted the CHT's cultural, linguistic and religious identity. The Copenhagen meeting discussed the present situation, and made decisions on how to proceed, which will be announced shortly.