The gaps in Bangladesh’s disappearance law

On September 6, 2026, Bangladesh's Parliament passed the Prevention and Remedy of Enforced Disappearance Bill, 2026, an attempt to reckon with the country's history of enforced disappearances—hundreds of cases in which activists and human rights defenders went missing into secret detention facilities, or were killed. 

The bill recognizes enforced disappearance as a distinct criminal offense and provides for the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators, efforts to locate disappeared persons, and certain rights and forms of reparation for victims and their families. On paper, much of this is what survivors, families, and human rights defenders have demanded for decades.

The bill contains serious flaws. Opposition lawmakers walked out of Parliament in protest, and their objections deserve consideration. The bill retains the death penalty as a possible punishment for those found guilty of an enforced disappearance, contrary to the growing international movement toward abolition of capital punishment.

Also, the bill fails to guarantee independent investigations, allowing security agencies who may be responsible for the crime to investigate themselves. The President still has an opportunity to address these concerns before the bill becomes law. 

The President may return a bill to Parliament within 15 days of its presentation, requesting that Parliament reconsider the bill or particular provisions and proposing amendments.

Among those raising concerns is Barrister Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem, known as Arman, a member of Parliament representing Dhaka-14 and adviser on foreign affairs to the opposition leader from Jamaat-e-Islami. Few understand the cost of a flawed enforced disappearance bill better than Arman, who survived eight years in secret detention under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government. 

One of the problems with the bill is its failure to guarantee independent investigations. Section 14 requires victims to lodge complaints with the officer-in-charge of a local police station rather than with an independent body, and the law defines "disciplinary force" broadly enough to cover the wider security apparatus. 

Bangladesh previously had a law, passed in 2025 by the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, that gave "an independent commission the power to walk into any detention facility unannounced," Arman told me from Dhaka. "That was not a luxury," he said, but the minimum obligation under the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which Bangladesh acceded to in 2024 following the ouster of the Hasina government. The new Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government allowed the previous law to lapse. 

"The result," Arman warned, is a law that "keeps the investigation of disappearances inside the security establishment and deters families from coming forward."

For Arman, these are not abstract questions of legislative drafting.

"I spent eight years in a secret cell, so I do not read this as a drafting error," he said. "It is a message to the security forces, written into law: abduct, torture, disappear people, and no one will hold you to account."

His warning should be taken seriously by the new BNP government.

Arman was among the opposition members of Parliament who walked out of the House during the passage of the legislation on September 6. He continues to advocate for a stronger bill, telling me the day after the walkout: "Parliament is being asked to legalize impunity, and the international community should see it for what it is." 

Enforced disappearance is a crime that typically involves state officials, secret detention facilities, summary executions or deaths under torture in some cases, concealed records, and institutions capable of obstructing investigations and destroying evidence. An effective law therefore needs more than an ordinary criminal investigation. It needs an investigative mechanism that is structurally independent of any institution or chain of command implicated in the alleged disappearance.

Article 12 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance requires authorities to “examine the allegation promptly and impartially and, where necessary, undertake without delay a thorough and impartial investigation.”

This requirement of impartiality is particularly important in enforced disappearance cases: security forces implicated in alleged disappearances should not be responsible for investigating themselves. Families searching for disappeared relatives should not have to depend on the institutions they may be accusing of abducting them.

The bill is nevertheless an important opportunity. Bangladesh needs legislation that criminalizes enforced disappearance and provides a credible path toward truth, justice, and reparations after years of impunity. But passing a landmark law is not enough if its provisions undermine the accountability it is supposed to deliver.

The President still has an opportunity to act. He should return the bill to Parliament and request that lawmakers guarantee independent and impartial investigations, protect people who report disappearances in good faith, ensure victims and their families have access to effective reparation, and remove the death penalty.

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John Quinley is a director at Fortify Rights, a human rights organization. Follow him on X: @john_hq3.