The UN pass and the diplomat behind the Mujib UNESCO prize
On October 3, a United Nations protocol officer in New York approved a request from Bangladesh’s Permanent Mission for a headquarters pass for Kazi Imtiaz Hossain, a retired Bangladeshi diplomat and husband of former Permanent Representative Rabab Fatima.
The request itself was permitted under UN rules. Former Permanent Representatives and their spouses can receive courtesy access to UN headquarters if the serving Permanent Representative or Chargé d’Affaires sponsors the application.
But documents reviewed by Daily Waadaa show that the application submitted for Hossain contained incomplete and apparently conflicting information.
Two days after Protocol approved the request, the UN Pass and ID Unit also informed the mission that Hossain already possessed a valid Gold Courtesy Card that would have to be surrendered before another card could be issued.
The sponsorship is significant for another reason. It came from Bangladesh’s new Permanent Representative, Irene Khan, five weeks after she took office.
Separate diplomatic records obtained by Waadaa show that Hossain, while serving as Bangladesh’s ambassador to France and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, initiated the proposal for a UNESCO prize named after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
He linked the proposal to the Mujib birth centenary programme, sought government funding for it and later signed the funding agreement. Bangladesh committed $450,000 over six years to the prize.
The pass application
Irene Khan took charge as Bangladesh’s Permanent Representative on August 28.
On September 30, a letter went out under her signature to the UN Chief of Protocol requesting a grounds pass for Hossain as “the spouse of the former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, HE Ms. Rabab Fatima.”
That sponsorship was necessary. UN procedures for this category of courtesy pass require a signed request from the current Permanent Representative or Chargé d’Affaires.
The mission submitted Form SG.38 with the letter.
The form provides three separate options — Issuance, Renewal and Duplicate. The copy reviewed by Daily Waadaa had two options selected.
The field marked “Principal’s Name,” intended to identify the former Permanent Representative through whom a spouse qualifies, was left blank. Fatima’s name did not appear on the form itself, although she was identified in the accompanying letter.
The form also carries an instruction stating: “No modification to this form is allowed. Modified forms will not be accepted.” It was signed and stamped by the mission’s Head of Chancery, Nabid Mostafa Zisan.
UN Protocol approved the request within three days. Then came a complication.
On October 5, a lieutenant with the UN Pass and ID Unit replied to the officials on the email chain and said Hossain “is currently in possession of a valid Gold Courtesy Card.”
No new card could be issued until that card was returned, the officer said.
About an hour later, a Protocol officer responded that the understanding had been that the mission would return Hossain’s “previously-issued ‘C’-category coded Ground Pass” when collecting the new one.
The correspondence therefore contains references to two different existing credentials: a valid Gold Courtesy Card cited by the Pass and ID Unit and a previously issued C-category grounds pass cited by Protocol.
The documents reviewed by Waadaa do not establish whether Hossain possessed both simultaneously, whether one had replaced the other or whether the two UN offices were referring differently to his existing access.
They do establish that the status of his existing credential had not been resolved when Protocol approved the new request.
The application also contained incomplete and apparently conflicting information despite UN procedures requiring Form SG.38 to be duly completed.
None of those issues establishes that Hossain was ineligible for a courtesy pass. As Fatima’s spouse, he could qualify. But obtaining such a pass required Bangladesh’s serving Permanent Representative to sponsor him.
Khan did so.
Among those copied on the correspondence was AKM Wahiduzzaman, Information and Technology Secretary of the BNP, who is now posted to the Bangladesh mission in New York.
Fatima served as Bangladesh’s Permanent Representative from late 2019 until 2022, during the Hasina government. She subsequently became a UN Under-Secretary-General and was appointed the Secretary-General’s envoy to Afghanistan in July this year.
Her tenure in New York coincided with growing international scrutiny of Bangladesh’s human rights record.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called for members of the Rapid Action Battalion to be barred from UN peacekeeping deployments. The United States sanctioned RAB and several serving and former officials in December 2021. UN experts also raised allegations involving enforced disappearances and the treatment of victims’ families.
The Hasina government rejected allegations of systematic abuses, while its UN mission defended Dhaka’s position. Hossain, meanwhile, was serving in Paris.
He had joined the foreign service in the same year as Fatima and went on to become ambassador to France and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO. After his retirement, the Hasina government appointed him chairman of the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, or BIISS.
A 59-page collection of diplomatic correspondence obtained by Waadaa shows that Hossain also played the initiating role in creating the UNESCO-Bangladesh Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman International Prize for the Creative Economy.
The $450,000 Mujib prize
The documentary trail begins on June 11, 2019, with a Bangla memo from Hossain to the Foreign Secretary.
The subject concerned the Paris embassy’s plans for the birth centenary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Hossain wrote that he had already met UNESCO’s senior culture official and examined the possibility of establishing an international prize. He noted that UNESCO’s culture sector had fewer prizes than its education and science sectors, which could give a new award greater prominence.
UNESCO had provided three possible budget structures, according to the memo.
Hossain asked Dhaka to make an early decision so that the prize could be launched in 2020, which the Hasina government had designated as Mujib Year.
The memo also explained why he had selected the creative economy as the subject.
A UNESCO prize carrying Mujib’s name, Hossain wrote, would help create a positive image of Bangladesh and establish a lasting relationship with UNESCO.
He linked the proposed subject to Mujib’s establishment of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy and the Folk Art Foundation, writing that the proposed field was closely connected with Mujib’s “life and ideals.”
The memo was copied to the Prime Minister’s Office and the national committee overseeing the birth centenary. On August 7, 2019, Hossain wrote to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay with a financial proposal.
Bangladesh would provide $150,000 every two years, enough to fund a $50,000 prize as well as UNESCO’s associated costs. Bangladesh would also pay $15,000 for the feasibility study required before the prize could be approved.
The source of that initial funding is recorded in subsequent government correspondence.
On February 16, 2020, Dhaka instructed the Paris embassy to pay the $15,000 from “the budget allocated in favour of the Mission for Birth Centenary Celebration.”
The instruction came from the Foreign Ministry’s Bangabandhu Birth Centenary Cell.
The feasibility study subsequently concluded that naming the prize after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman presented no “reputational risk.” UNESCO’s Executive Board approved the prize on December 11, 2020.
Three days later, then-Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen wrote to UNESCO’s director-general on behalf of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, thanking the organisation and saying Hossain would work closely with UNESCO on implementing the prize.
By January 2021, official correspondence from the Paris embassy carried the Mujib 100 logo and a UNESCO centenary mark. The embassy letterhead also carried the government slogan: “Mujib Year’s Diplomacy, Friendship and Prosperity.”
On March 5, 2021, UNESCO requested the first $150,000.
Three days later, Hossain sent an urgent fax to Dhaka addressed to the Foreign Ministry’s “Focal Point, Bangabandhu Cell.”
He requested “the immediate transfer of USD 150,000” and asked that the matter “be accorded high priority.”
The money was transferred on May 24.
The bank record reviewed by Waadaa shows the Foreign Ministry, through Bangladesh Bank, transferring $150,000 to UNESCO’s account in New York. The payment reference read: “Payment for Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman International Prize.”
Hossain signed the funding agreement on behalf of the Bangladesh government the same day.
The agreement provided for three $150,000 installments over six years, taking the government’s total commitment to $450,000.
The prize was presented for the first time at UNESCO’s General Conference in Paris on November 11, 2021. Hasina presented the award.
Four days later, Bangladesh’s parliament passed a motion thanking UNESCO for establishing a prize named after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The Foreign Ministry sent the resolution to Paris and instructed Hossain to convey it to UNESCO.
The Paris embassy was also awarded Bangladesh’s Public Administration Award in 2021 for what the citation described as “internationalizing the ideology of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at UNESCO.”
Hossain received the award.
The records reviewed by Waadaa show that Hossain was not simply implementing a proposal sent to Paris from Dhaka. The initial proposal came from him.
He explored the idea with UNESCO, proposed the creative economy as its subject, connected that choice to Mujib’s record, sought approval from Dhaka, secured money from the centenary programme, pursued the first $150,000 payment and signed the funding agreement on behalf of the government.
Waadaa contacted Bangladesh Permanent Mission in New York for clarification on Hossain’s pass request, but didn’t get any reply.
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