Mostafa Faisal

In Bangladesh, women continue to face higher unemployment rates and ‎lower wages in the ‎labour market, making gender inequality a persistent ‎challenge that hinders balanced economic ‎development. Therefore, this study ‎aims to investigate the returns to human capital investment ‎by gender and ‎geographic location. Applying a multiple linear regression framework, the ‎study ‎examines the divergence in returns on human capital investments ‎across male-female and rural-‎urban cohorts. Data for this study were sourced ‎from the Bangladesh Labour Force Survey 2016–‎‎17, conducted by the ‎Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, and analysed using the statistical ‎software ‎package Stata. Specifically, a Mincerian econometric wage function was ‎taken for the ‎analysis. The empirical results reveal substantially different ‎returns to education by gender; the ‎male counterpart receives a 12.41 percent ‎return on education compared to just 4.34 percent for ‎females, highlighting a ‎stark gender wage gap in Bangladesh’s labour market. Furthermore, urban ‎‎education yields a 12.74 percent return on income, compared to 9.38 percent ‎in rural areas. ‎Ultimately, these findings offer a novel contribution by ‎integrating a joint gender and urban-‎rural analysis within the context of the ‎Bangladeshi labour market.‎

The Mediterranean migration crisis has exposed persistent structural weaknesses in the European Union’s migration and asylum governance. This study examines the EU’s principal legal mechanisms and policy responses, including the Dublin Regulation, the Schengen Agreement, the Common European Asylum System, and the European Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum. Using qualitative analysis of policy documents, legal frameworks, institutional reports, and selected case studies, the research evaluates how these instruments operate in practice and their consequences for migrants, frontline states, and host societies. The findings reveal that current EU policies place disproportionate responsibility on Mediterranean border states, produce inconsistent asylum outcomes, and prioritize border securitization over the protection of fundamental rights. Case studies such as the Moria camp fire, the Ceuta crisis, and state responses to NGO rescue operations illustrate the humanitarian and legal consequences of these policy choices. The study argues that without binding responsibility-sharing mechanisms and stronger integration-oriented reforms, EU migration governance will remain fragmented and reactive. It concludes by emphasizing the need for adaptable, rights-based policy frameworks that reconcile border management with humanitarian obligations and long-term migrant integration.

This study examines the relationship between Bangladesh’s low rankings in international governance and justice indexes and the perceptions of 200 university students. The research problem focuses on understanding how these poor rankings correspond to the students’ views on key areas such as judicial independence, human rights protection, freedom of speech and press, government influence on the legal system, and corruption. The findings indicate a significant alignment between students’ perceptions and Bangladesh’s poor rankings, revealing deep-seated concerns in these domains. The research also highlights students' positive views on the importance of an effective judiciary for economic growth and the necessity of public awareness about the legal system. Employing a mixed-method approach, this study combines secondary data from international indexes with primary data from student questionnaires, providing a comprehensive analysis of the governance, justice, and legal system issues in Bangladesh. These insights emphasized the need for targeted policy reforms and further research to address the identified challenges.

This study examines how the Arab Spring affects the national integration in Yemen. Despite the Arab Spring’s bringing forth tangible democratic transitions through inclusive democratic elections in Tunisia and Egypt, it created a social and political divide more than the previous time through diminishing the likelihood of national integration in Yemen. Some scholarly debates ascribe Arab Spring to Yemen’s lagging for national integration. However, others are on the opinion that Yemen never could realize a sustainable national integration due to its going through a perennial authoritarian or autocratic rule like some other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and a long territorial and ideological division, as well as manifold power-seeking sections. The Arab Spring just exacerbated the remaining disintegration. This study holds on to the latter consideration and firstly, discusses the pre-Arab Spring territorial and political schism in Yemen. Then, it examines facts that triggered political fragmentation and instability in Yemen during and in the aftermath of the Arab Spring leaving little hope for the country to step into a successful national integration in near future. The main aim of this paper is to illustrate how a regional or global event impact potential national integration of a country that is heavily divided socially, politically, and ideologically along with corruption and state controlled civil society.

Rohingya is one of the most persecuted ethnic minority groups in the world, as identified by United Nations. More than one million Rohingya refugees, over half of whom are children, live at various camps in Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh. This study uses a mixed methodology approach based on primary data to examine the life and livelihood challenges of Rohingya people in the refugee camps. The study's findings reveal that there is a severe scarcity of basic human needs in the Rohingya camps and a prevalence of widespread human rights violations. Among the life and livelihood challenges in the camps are- poor health services, the weak structure of shelter, scarcity of nutritious food, inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure, lack of education facilities after secondary school, gender-based violence, insecurity, congestion and lack of privacy, limited freedom of movement, and high risk of landslide. The study's findings may guide governments and NGOs operating in Rohingya camps to ensure the community's basic needs and human rights.