The official end of armed hostilities between insurgents and the Bangladesh military in 1997, post-conflict development interventions by international donors and the Government of Bangladesh, along with a greater emphasis on local ownership over peacebuilding interventions, as expressed in the Rangamati Declaration (1998), have given birth to the onset of NGO peacebuilding in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). This article argues that the aid flow has not only transformed community-based organizations into project-based local NGOs, but has also bred a new generation of profit-oriented and donor-driven local NGOs. This article concludes that NGO implementation of development projects and advocacy for human rights, despite being mostly effective in its identification of local needs, is severely affected by three major risk factors: legitimacy, security, and sustainability.

The decade-long low-intensity armed conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) that surfaced soon after the independence of Bangladesh (1971) due to the failure of the state-building project ended with the CHT Accord which was signed in 1997 between the government of Bangladesh and the Parbattya Chattagram Jana Sanhati Samiti (PCJSS). This study uses qualitative research methods to explore the fundamental research question of who is in the driver's seat of the post-accord CHT peacebuilding process. A mostly top-down approach to peacebuilding has been used in the CHT due to an entirely donor-driven peacebuilding partnership between local and international stakeholders. Under this asymmetric power structure, the marginalization of local ownership is expected to produce unintended results in the peace process.

The official end of armed hostilities between insurgents and the Bangladesh military in 1997, post-conflict development interventions by international donors and the Government of Bangladesh, along with a greater emphasis on local ownership over peacebuilding interventions, as expressed in the Rangamati Declaration (1998), have given birth to the onset of NGO peacebuilding in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). This article argues that the aid flow has not only transformed community-based organizations into project-based local NGOs, but has also bred a new generation of profit-oriented and donor-driven local NGOs. This article concludes that NGO implementation of development projects and advocacy for human rights, despite being mostly effective in its identification of local needs, is severely affected by three major risk factors: legitimacy, security, and sustainability.

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Does political security influence the life satisfaction of indigenous peoples of Bangladesh? This study has addressed this research question using a survey dataset ( N = 384) that contains a set of variables about the political security and life satisfaction of indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. This study offers fresh insights into how political insecurity, which has resulted from government repression and systematic violation of human rights, decreases the life satisfaction of indigenous peoples of the CHT. More precisely, indigenous peoples who feel they do not have their right to liberty, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and the right to participation are more likely to be dissatisfied with their lives than those who report they enjoy these political rights. Overall, the findings of this research suggest that a negative relationship exists between the denial of fundamental freedoms and civil liberties and life satisfaction.