At a rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, December 2021
Mohammad Ponir Hossain / Reuters

In recent years, Bangladesh has periodically drawn global attention for its ostensibly strong economic growth, its humanitarian efforts in sheltering more than a million refugees from neighboring Myanmar, and its battle against Islamist militant groups connected to transnational terrorist organizations. It has been portrayed as a success story of both liberalization and globalization. The eighth most populous country in the world shook off military rule in the 1990s to become an electoral democracy. It successfully pulled 15 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2021 and has cut the overall poverty rate in half since 2000. Its manufacturing and textile sectors have flourished.

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