The InternationalCovenant on Civil and Political Rights: A Study on Bangladesh Compliance ruled that the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution was unconstitutional. Ratified in 1979, the Fifth Amendment overturned a previous law banning unions, associations, or parties based on religion and stating that all citizens have a right to form a union, association, or party for whatever purpose they desire. The ruling returned avowed secularism to the Constitution and nominally banned Islamic political parties; however, the government made it clear that the ban would not be strictly enforced. Yet, the matter remained under debate at the highest levels of the government, and finally, after the Fifteenth Amendment, contrasting norms of Islam as the State-religion and secularism co-exist in the Constitution. Besides this, under the Penal Code, any person who has a ‘deliberate’ or ‘malicious’ intention of hurting religious sentiments is liable to face imprisonment. In addition, the Code of Criminal Procedure states that “the government may confiscate all copies of a newspaper if it publishes anything that creates enmity and hatred among the citizens or denigrates religious beliefs.” Access to Justice: While the notion of justice creates images of the rule of law, resolution of disputes and mechanisms for the enforcement of laws, intrinsic to the notion of justice is access to justice 47 S. Khair, Legal Empowerment for the Poor and the Disadvantaged: Strategies, Achievements and Challenges (Dhaka: privately printed, 2008), 3. 48 Ibid, 4. 43