Country report and updates: Bangladesh

1 Conscription

conscription does not exist

Conscription has never existed in Bangladesh.

The 1952 Bangladesh Army Act does provide for the possible introduction of compulsory military service. According to section 7, the government may declare that any individual or category of individuals are on active service. The government has never done so.

Voluntary applications to join the armed forces are usually sufficient to achieve the requisite number of recruits, although the armed forces do occasionally run short of recruits with a certain level of education. [2]

recruitment

Legal enlistment age is between the ages of 16 and a half and 22 for officers, and between 16 and 22 for soldiers - with slight differences depending on which branch of the armed forces one is applying to serve. [1]

2 Conscientious objection

There is no known legal provision for conscientious objection.

3 Desertion

No information available.

6 Annual statistics

The armed forces are 121,000-strong, that is, 0.10 percent of the population. [3]

Sources

[1] Permanent Mission of Bangladesh in Geneva 1997. Response to Quaker United Nations Office inquiry, 17 November 1997. [2] US Library of Congress 1988. Bangladesh - a country study. Area Handbooks, State Department, Washington DC. [3] Institute for Strategic Studies 1997. Military Balance 1997/98. ISS, London.