The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led government has formed three high-level committees to address long-standing problems in the Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT), a region in southeastern Bangladesh that borders India's Tripura and Mizoram states and Myanmar's Rakhine state. Bangladeshi intellectuals, civil society representatives and several Asian rights bodies have opposed the move, arguing that it could increase militarisation and human rights violations against the region's indigenous people.
In a recent joint statement, the signatories urged Dhaka to avoid what they described as fresh attempts at bureaucratic rule in the CHT and to seek solutions through political dialogue with stakeholders. Signatories included Iftekharuzzaman of Transparency International Bangladesh, Shireen Parveen Huq of Naripokkho, rights activists Sultana Kamal and Nur Khan, economist Anu Muhammad, senior advocate ZI Khan Panna, photographer Shahidul Alam, and Dhaka University professors Sumaiya Khair and Samina Luthfa.
They said the failure to implement the CHT peace accord in the 29 years since it was signed has left the region unsettled.
On 10 September 2026, the government of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman issued three gazette notifications creating a National Committee, an Executive Committee and an Advisory Committee on CHT affairs. The National Committee is chaired by the prime minister and has 19 members, including several ministers. It is mandated to set priority policies for the region, coordinate with implementing agencies and finalise a national strategy for the CHT.
The other two committees are tasked with recommending policies on overall development, counterterrorism, border protection and communal harmony.
The New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) has also criticised the government, accusing it of failing to ensure peace and security in the CHT and calling for demilitarisation, which the peace accord provides for.
ACHR director Suhas Chakma objected to the appointment of the director general of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Bangladesh's military intelligence agency, as member secretary of the National Committee. Chakma said the choice reflects ill intent on the government's part and raises serious concern, given that the CHT is the homeland of much of Bangladesh's indigenous population.
The dispute has deep historical roots. At the time of the 1947 partition, when the CHT became part of East Pakistan, the population was reportedly more than 97 percent non-Muslim. In the 1960s, the construction of the Kaptai hydroelectric dam displaced an estimated 100,000 or more Pahari people, and many crossed into India through Tripura.
After Bangladesh's independence in 1971, tribal leaders from the region sought genuine autonomy, but Dhaka rejected the demand.
Between 1979 and 1983, successive governments settled landless Bengali Muslims in the hills. Critics put the number at more than 400,000 and say the resettlement involved land seizures and the deployment of more than 100,000 soldiers. As a result, indigenous people now make up roughly 49 percent of the population.
The Pahari movement, led by the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PJSS), began as a political campaign but turned into an armed insurgency. Efforts by President Ziaur Rahman and later by military ruler Hussain Mohammad Ershad to negotiate a settlement did not succeed.
Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government signed the CHT peace accord on 2 December 1997 to end the armed conflict. Indigenous leaders and rights groups say that successive governments, including Hasina's after she returned to power in 2009, have not fully implemented it, and that the current government risks repeating the pattern.
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*Senior journalist based in Guwahati
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