Bangladesh, Burma and the Rohingya crisis 51 cases, both civil and criminal. Commentators described this backlog as a barrier to justice in all type of cases giving rise to constraints upon all areas of economic and social activity. We were staggered by the quantity and distribution of mountains of physical files in the facility we visited (yet impressed by the apparent ability of the paralegal staff we met to navigate this paperwork). 122. While Bangladesh’s total prison population is lower than that of England and Wales, the proportion of ‘untried’ detainees at any one time was around 75–80%, 56,000 people (compared to the E&W equivalents of nearer 10% and 9,000).155 In the Bangladeshi case, however, a large majority of untried detainees may well be eventually acquitted; some after decades of incarceration. DFID has allocated £33.5 million between 2013 and 2021 to improving access to justice in Bangladesh with the specific aim of benefitting up to “2 million poor people” and reducing the remand population by up to 17,750 across 35 prisons. More effective and efficient justice and criminal justice systems should, eventually, encourage more than the 8% of Bangladeshis who currently feel comfortable reporting crime to the police, and the 1.5% willing to go to court; it may also assist improving upon the obscenely high proportion, 99.6%, of cases of gender-based violence that fail. 123. We raised with DFID, evidence we had received which alleged continuing abuses and violence committed by Bangladeshi security forces against ethnic minorities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in south eastern Bangladesh.156 Minister Burt responded that the UK did not have programmes addressing violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts at present due to a perception that “the pressures that were evident 20 years ago had eased to some degree, but the evidence that you heard has interested us, and we will look at that.”157 The Minister said that a programme entitled Enabling Pathways out of Extreme Poverty had the potential to be extended to the Hill Tracts in the future, providing some “basic help, access to services, work opportunities and the like”.158 We were grateful to the Minister for undertaking to investigate reports of Bangladeshi military violence and consequent unrest in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. We look forward to a response on this point when the Government replies to this report. Women and girls 124. Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world despite legislation in place prohibiting marriage for girls under the age of 18 and boys under the age of 21.159 Over half of women currently between the ages of 20–24 were married before their 18th birthday and one in five were married before their 15th birthday.160 Bangladesh faced criticism in 2017 from human rights groups161 when it passed an amendment to relevant statute permitting girls under age 18 to marry under “special circumstances,” such as “accidental” or “illegal” pregnancy, with permission from their parents and a court. There is no age limit on how early girls can marry under this exception.162 Women 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 World Prison Brief: Bangladesh Mr Felix Dawes (DBB037) Q226 Q226–227 DFID country briefing DFID country briefing Human Rights Watch, World Report 2018 Bangladesh DFID country briefing