A Son Returns to the UN Podium
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman walked to the podium of the UN General Assembly on 24 September (Thursday) in New York and let the weight of the setting show.
He said standing before the Assembly felt nostalgic, since it was the same platform where his father, Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman, addressed the world in 1980, and his mother, Late Khaleda Zia, did the same across five sessions between 1993 and 2005.
As the third member of his family to speak there, he delivered his own maiden address in Bangla, a 17-minute speech meant to carry the emotions and expectations of the Bangladeshi people rather than his own.
He opened with remembrance, paying tribute to the martyrs of the Liberation War and recalling those killed and injured during the July–August 2024 uprising.
It set the tone for the rest of the address: a government presenting itself as recovery from a specific, recent rupture rather than simply a continuation of history.
The setting matters because Bangladesh has long used this stage to define itself. Ziaur Rahman’s 1980 address stressed the widening gap between rich and poor nations and the need for genuine international cooperation.
Khaleda Zia followed, addressing the Assembly between 1993 and 2005. Speaking in Bangla, the national language, also echoes the tradition begun at the UN in 1974.
What is different this year is the company: a Bangladeshi, Foreign Minister Dr Khalilur Rahman, is presiding over the 81st session itself, so the country is helping shape the Assembly’s work as well as addressing it.
The centerpiece was a framework he called the “3-R strategy”: Recovery, Restoration and Reconstruction.
He told the Assembly that Bangladesh is rebuilding after more than a decade and a half of what he described as fascist rule and exploitation, ending in 2024.
It is a simple label, but likely the one his government wants this speech remembered by.
The most substantive section moved past appeals for sympathy toward specific asks.
He said the world needed to shift from empathy to root causes, from promises to action, and from managing displacement to ending it.
He laid out five measures:
# A credible roadmap for early, safe, voluntary, dignified repatriation, with regional and international actors using their leverage on Myanmar
# An end to violence against civilians in Myanmar, including Rohingyas, so their rights and security at home are guaranteed
# Predictable humanitarian support for the Rohingya and for the Bangladeshi communities hosting them
# Continued accountability, including support for the ICJ and ICC
# Firm international backing for a lasting solution, plus continued life-saving aid until repatriation happens
The number worth repeating: Bangladesh has sheltered more than 1.2 million displaced Rohingyas for over nine years.
The speech read less like a request for patience and more like an argument that patience has run out. He carried the same message to the UN’s senior officials.
He met Secretary-General António Guterres, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Myanmar Julie Bishop and High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, and told UN refugee chief Barham Salih that there is no alternative to safe, dignified repatriation.
Bangladesh also organized its own high-level event on the crisis on the sidelines of the session.
The PM used the podium for an economic announcement too, saying the government has set aside $50 million this fiscal year for young entrepreneurs, researchers and innovators, framing it as turning the country’s youth population into an economic asset.
He paired that with a call for global rules on AI and social media, so their growth benefits countries fairly rather than deepening existing gaps.
He also mentioned a planned “Universal Card,” integrating existing social-support cards into one system.
The investment message travelled beyond the hall. He met World Bank Group President Ajay Banga, the Gates Foundation and Wall Street investors, and also held talks with the International Peace Institute.
Hours before addressing the Assembly, the PM opened a high-level UN meeting on the existential threats posed by sea-level rise.
The sequencing mattered: it let Bangladesh’s climate-vulnerability argument land before he had said a word to the full Assembly. For a low-lying delta nation, the issue is not abstract. It shapes agriculture, migration and the safety of coastal communities.
The speech was one part of a crowded four-day schedule of 30 official engagements, including 11 bilateral meetings.
The PM held talks with the leaders of seven countries: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with whom he discussed expanding trade and investment ties; Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian; Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif; Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic; Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay; Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul; and Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime.
He also met Kuwait’s Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Maldives Vice President Hussain Mohamed Latheef and Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard.
Talks with the Middle Eastern leaders centered on manpower exports, energy security and investment, while the meeting with Sweden focused on health and development cooperation.
He also attended a gathering hosted by US President Donald Trump for world leaders. Such meetings are often where a speech’s promises are tested, and they suggest a government eager to convert rhetoric into partnerships.
The measure of this speech will not be how it read in New York. It will be whether the 3-R strategy, the Rohingya roadmap and the youth fund produce results back home over the coming year: repatriation progress, start-ups that survive past their seed funding, and a recovery Bangladeshis can feel rather than one they were told about from a podium abroad.
A government that names its goals so clearly has also handed its critics, and its citizens, the yardstick by which to judge it.
That is a risk worth taking, and the right one for an elected government to accept.
(The writer: LLB- Middlesex University, UK; LLM-BPP University, UK; Former Country Coordinator, Amnesty International UK; Email: jobayer.exceltech@gmail.com)
