Who Investigates the Investigators? Bangladesh’s NHRC Bill 2026
By Sabahat Mazhar
The Paris Principles, i.e., the international standards governing national human rights institutions, require investigative bodies to be independent in law and in practice. Where that independence is absent, the very actors meant to be investigated risk becoming the investigators.
Bangladesh shows what that looks like in practice. On 9 April 2026, Parliament passed the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) (Repeal and Re-enactment) Bill, 2026 by voice vote, repealing the 2025 Ordinance and reviving the National Human Rights Commission Act, 2009. Law Minister Md Asaduzzaman called the 2025 Ordinance’s Section 16 “problematic,” warning it risked weakening protections against enforced disappearances. He framed the repeal as temporary, pending future consultations through a proposed parliamentary committee. On June 22, 2026, thirteen international organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, issued a joint statement condemning the bill as a regression.
The National Human Rights Commission Ordinance of 2025 had granted the Commission far greater independence than the 2009 Act it replaced, including direct investigative authority over enforced disappearances and custodial deaths, and the power to inspect detention facilities run by intelligence agencies and the military. These provisions, absent from the 2009 Act, are now gone with its revival. The 2026 bill also removed mandatory representation quotas for women and ethnic minorities. National Citizen Party (NCP) lawmaker Md Abul Hasnat warned that reviving the 2009 Act risked turning the Commission into a tool for “political repression.”
Among the provisions revived from the 2009 Act, the self-investigation mechanism is the most consequential. Under the bill, the NHRC must rely on reports prepared by “the chief of the force concerned” when investigating security force violations, self-investigation by definition, leaving the Commission no power to verify facts autonomously. This is particularly significant given that, per Human Rights Watch, many of Bangladesh’s most serious human rights violations, including torture and extrajudicial killings, over the past decades have involved allegations against security force members.
This mechanism, alongside the removal of the Commission’s independence clause, puts the 2026 bill in direct tension with the Paris Principles. The 2025 Ordinance had explicitly stated the Commission “shall not fall under any ministry or division of government”, a clause removed under the new bill. The selection committee for the NHRC now includes the Law Minister, Home Minister, and ruling-party MPs, expanding executive influence over the Commission’s composition. According to the joint statement, these risks are undermining Bangladesh’s prospects for international accreditation.
That risk is not hypothetical. According to Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), the self-investigation clause is not new language but Section 18 of the 2009 Act, reinstated verbatim. Under that same provision, the Commission previously lacked independent investigative authority, making it a key reason, according to TIB, that Bangladesh’s NHRC was never granted “A Status” by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI), the top accreditation tier enabling full participation in international human rights mechanisms.
Bangladesh has tested this mechanism before, and the accreditation it sought once eluded it. Human Rights Watch warns that, without substantial amendment, the bill risks creating an institution that retains only the appearance of independence. A commission required to rely on the word of the forces it is meant to scrutinise has little left to investigate independently. Who investigates the investigators, when the investigators answer only to themselves?