The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights can be freely chosen or accepted. Chondro(40), an illiterate woman of Madargonj in Jamalpur district. During an appraisal conducted by This means, for example, that states an NGO she said “I am an illiterate person and have been to school. I do some seasonal work such must not obliterate a person’s never as rice processing and picking chili from the field opportunity to earn his or her living but the earnings are not enough to ensure 3 meals. Moreover, the female workers get fewer wages than (obligation to respect). States male workers. Women get 50 taka for picking 2 must prevent this opportunity from sacks of chili while men get 100 taka or more.” Source: Madargonj Appraisal Pack, Bangladesh being demolished by third parties Association for Community Education (BACE), (obligation to protect). States January 2012 must provide the opportunity to earn one’s living to each person who currently does not have this opportunity (obligation to fulfill). Moreover, people’s preferences as to the type of work they do must be satisfied as far as possible. So, the analysis of Right to Work should be considered in line with the state obligations under the right to work policy and hence, the following attempt has been taken to analyze it. The labour market in Bangladesh is characterized by (i) high rate of labour force growth, (ii) low rate of unemployment but high under-employment rate, (iii) predominance of employment in agriculture followed by the services sector, (iv) smaller share of female employment, and (v) low wage rates. According to the Report on Monitoring of Employment Survey 2009 conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the labour force increased from 49.5 million to 53.7 million from 2006 to 2009. The growth rate has been 2.7% a year. 62.7% of the population are aged 15 years and over, and out of them 59.3% are economically active and 40.7% are economically not active. The volume of the female labour force (13.5m) is much smaller than that of the male (40.2m) and the volume of those not in the labour force for female is larger than that of male. The employment rate for male (94.9%) was higher than female (92.5%) at the national level. The employment rate in urban areas (59.5%) was slightly higher than that of rural area(59.2%). Unemployment was higher for female(7.7%) than male(4.3%). The unemployment rate was also higher in the rural areas (5.1%) than in the urban areas (5.0%). The unemployment rate provides a partial picture of the labour market performance because the unemployment rate does not take into account labour who are underemployed (28.7%) e.g. who work less than 35 hours a week. 58 1 International Labour Organisation (ILO), Baselin Survey on Child Domestic Labour in Bangladesh, 2006 2 BBS/UNICEF, Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2006, October 2007 All other statistics from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Report on National Child Labour Survey, 2002-2003 So, each year additional workers enter the labour force looking for jobs and the government should be responsible for creating roughly 10 million, as per the Bangladesh Development Initiatives SIX-POINT POLICY PRIORITIES FOR BANGLADESH: 2009–2013, new jobs the upcoming five years. The minority communities, including women, must have the same opportunities in the government’s efforts to create jobs. The government undertakes job creation programmes for those who are by-passed by the normal growth process. The existing labour market policies and programmes underline the importance of a rights-based approach to employment and of guaranteeing employment promotion especially through micro-credit and employment-based social safety nets through public works programmes. The government has different programmes for creating employment for the larger labour force as estimated above. The coverage, funding and effectiveness of the existing employment generation programmes appear to be limited. The existing programmes cannot guarantee jobs and income security to the poor. The government introduced the 100 days Employment Generation Programme in fiscal year 2008 for the rural people. In view of the implementation experience, a changed programme entitled Employment Generation for the Hard Core Poor has been introduced in fiscal year 2010 which created about 56 lakh man-months of employment. Skill training is provided by various levels and types of institutions offering a variety of courses under Ministry of Education and Ministry of Labour and Employment. At the highest level, the engineering and technology 59