As Tomuschat claims, when today anywhere in the world a national constitution is framed, the ICCPR serves as the natural yardstick for the drafting of a section on fundamental rights.28 In most countries, the ICCPR has been made part and parcel of the national legal order although there is no general rule of international law that would enjoin States to embrace a specific method of implementation. Since its inception, Bangladesh has been repeatedly underscoring, albeit theoretically, its commitment to the peremptory norms of international human rights law. The Constitution, adopted soon after independence, incorporates a number of civil and political rights in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Bangladesh has also committed itself to the international responsibility of protecting and promoting civil and political rights by ratifying and acceding to the ICCPR on September 6, 2000. The following is a glimpse of the rights incorporated in the Constitution in light of the ICCPR. Right to Life: Article 31 of the Constitution guarantees the right to life and personal liberty. As Mahmudul Islam notes, “‘[l]ife’ within the meaning of Article 31 means something more than mere animal existence;” it includes the right to live consistently with human dignity and decency, the right to the bare 29 32 Mahmudul Islam, Constitutional Law of Bangladesh (Dhaka: BILIA, 1995), 163