Who We Are
The name “Nagorik Uddyog” (The Citizen’s Initiative) epitomizes the organization’s fundamental goal as well as the strategies and activities it utilizes to achieve this goal. Nagorik Uddyog promotes people’s participation and access to democracy, rights, justice & development.
Since its establishment 1995, Nagorik Uddyog (NU) has worked to strengthen local government in Bangladesh via the dual imperatives of, on the one hand, raising awareness among the general masses of people’s basic human rights and, on the other, building people’s capacity to pursue and realize these rights.
NU recognizes that democratic elections are by themselves insufficient in fulfilling democracy. The poor, marginalized and disadvantaged must be given the power to participate in and contribute to all those decision-making processes that affect their lives. Accordingly, NU strives to provide an enabling condition for the people to set up institutions and mobilize themselves.
NU holds special interest in democratizing the historically gender-imbalanced “Shalish”, Bangladesh’s traditional rural dispute-resolution system. A fair and equitable Shalish entails unprecedented access to justice for rural women – the ‘poorest of the poor’ in this country – and in turn a new and exciting horizon in Bangladesh’s development journey.
VISION
Nagorik Uddyog (NU) envisages a poverty free nation with equal rights and dignity irrespective of race, colour, sex, language, religion, ethnic or social origin, income, birth or other opinion and status.
MISSION
A society based on social and gender justice, equality and rule of law with accountable, transparent and responsive institutions by mobilizing community people through building their own self-sustain organizations that they can realize their rights and entitlements, with special focus on women, socially excluded, unprivileged and minority communities.
OBJECTIVES
- Improve access to justice through human rights education, community mediation and legal aid support;
- Strengthen women leadership by promoting their individual and collective capabilities to realize women’s rights;
- Democratization of the rural conventional mediation to resolve local dispute and support to access justice to the poor and women;
- Protect and promote rights of dalit, ethnic group, socially excluded and minority communities;
- Promote garment worker/informal workers rights through providing skill training, policy advocacy, campaign and networking;
- Empower the citizen’s to promote transparency and accountability of government and non-government institutions having access to information RTI act;
- Strengthen Local Government Institutions (LGIs) by supporting local justice mechanisms, ensuring good governance and building institutional capacity;
- Enhance environmental sustainability by reducing adverse impact of climate change and building linkage between human rights, environment and development;
- Undertake research, fact findings and investigations on socio-economic, cultural and civil and political rights;
- Protect and promote human rights through lobby, advocacy, networking and campaign at local, national and international level.
NU INTERVENTIONS
- Human rights education, community mediation and legal aid support;
- Women’s empowerment through building women’s leadership capacity;
- Strengthening local governance;
- Rights of Dalits, socially excluded and ethnic minorities;
- Child Rights;
- Labor Rights;
- Access to information by using right to information act;
- Human rights and civic awareness for youth;
- Community theater and folk cultural activities for promoting legal and human rights awareness;
- National and international advocacy, networking and campaigning to promote human rights;
- Disaster response, environment & climate change;
- Research and Publications.
Nagorik Uddyog has Special Consultative Status with UN Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC)
RTI Related Information
A. Name and contact details of the Focal Person
Md. Mizanur Rahman, Manager (Human Resource) and Information Officer (RTI), Phone- 01719310874, email:rmizan2004@yahoo.com
B. Information of having online training on Right to Information with evidence
Received training on Right to Information through online in October 2021.