From May 11-13, 2023, the University of South Carolina’s Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC) in partnership with the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Society Trust (BLAST) kicked off its training program on strategic litigation for Bangladeshi labor rights advocates through a three-day in-person workshop in Dhaka. The Dhaka workshop covered a range of practitioner-oriented issues including Bangladeshi and global workers’ rights issues, Bangladesh’s Public Interest Litigation (PIL) framework, international human rights law (IHRL) instrumentalities, evidence gathering, legal writing, and strategic advocacy. The workshop was highly interactive, with participants sharing their professional expertise with each other and engaging in frank dialogue on a range of legal and policy issues. The training program will continue through an online modality and will facilitate and support the creation of an online community of practice for Bangladeshi labor rights advocates.

The course instructor, Sharanjeet Parmar, has over twenty years of experience as a labor rights, human rights, and transitional justice attorney. This program represents ROLC’s first course on strategic litigation and is modeled on ROLC’s Rule of Law Certification Program in Ukraine. The Rule of Law Collaborative and Bangladesh Legal Aid and Society Trust is building capacity for Bangladeshi workers, labor rights advocates, journalists, and other stakeholders through its Empowering Workers for Justice (EWJ) project. The EWJ project is funded by the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL).