By Owasim Akram

After working for more than ten years as a development practitioner in Bangladesh with a tremendous opportunity to observe the lives of the extreme poor while living very closely to them, one simple question kept chasing me all the time: why do millions of them remain still poor despite huge progress in the economy, policy changes and many development interventions both from the Government and other development partners?

As the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes have repeatedly stated, development is not neutral. The time has now come for us to once again take a stand by taking a knee. We condemn all forms of racism and discrimination. Human dignity and equality mean that #BlackLivesMatter. To the full statement