Bangladesh: the legacy of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, forty years on

08-05-2012 Feature

Following World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day on 8 May, two workers of the Movement and a former beneficiary talk about their roles in the humanitarian family.

A life spent tracing missing persons

"It was challenging and exciting at the same time," Monwara Sarkar runs the tracing department at the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society (BDRCS). She looks back on her involvement with the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement since 1971.

That year, civil war broke out in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). At just 17, Monwara was recruited to trace people displaced during the fighting. Women were often attacked, and this was a dangerous time for her to be working outside the safety of an office.

"When the air attacks started in the first week of December 1971, my family decided to move away from Dhaka. For my safety, the ICRC delegates organized accommodation for me at what was then the Hotel Intercontinental. This was a neutral zone, accepted by both the Pakistani army and the Muktibahini (Bengali liberation fighters)."

In 1975, after Bangladesh and Pakistan had established diplomatic relations, the ICRC closed down its operation in Bangladesh. The remaining tracing requests from Bangladesh were handed over to the BDRCS and Monwara was given the responsibility of identifying a suitable successor. But she herself carried on with the Movement for the next three decades.

"During the war I saw how the Movement worked to keep people safe, so I continued to help the victims of man-made and natural disasters."

Memories of a reassuring emblem

The Movement gained popularity on the subcontinent in the 1970s when it launched a huge programme to repatriate people stranded in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh after the war.

One of the beneficiaries of that programme was Group Captain Mahbubul Huq, who had been stationed at a Pakistan Air Force base in Karachi when war broke out. After the war, all Bengali military personnel who, like Huq, had declared their allegiance to Bangladesh, were taken to repatriation camps. Huq was held in Shagai Fort, in the north-western province of Pakistan.

"We were not sure if the world knew that we were interned in such camps till the ICRC visited us,

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