NEWS / Bangladesh ratifies Apostille Convention

The South Asian nation of Bangladesh has ratified its membership in the Apostille Convention. It will start issuing and accepting documents legalized with apostilles starting March 2025. The ratification took place during the visit of now former Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud to the Netherlands between July 28 and 30.

“The money, time, and effort spent on all these will be saved if we join this convention, and we will save 4,000,000,000 Taka to 5,000,000,000 Taka,” Hasan was quoted by the Daily Sun as saying.

Mahmud filed the required paperwork in The Hague following a government decision on May 20. Mahmud returned to Bangladesh shortly after his trip to the Netherlands only to attempt to flee the country after the protests against Sheikh Hasina’s government got out of control. Mahmud, who had been serving as the country’s foreign minister since January, was then detained by the airport police and handed over to the country’s military. Prime Minister Hasina succeeded in fleeing the country to temporarily settle an undisclosed location in India.

The turmoil in the country led to the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in power since 2009, who had attempted to reinstate quotas for descendants of “freedom fighters” (those who led the Bangladeshi independence movement in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War against Pakistan after Pakistani military president Yahya Khan annulled the results of a democratic election won by the pro-Bengali Awami League, then led by Sheikh Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman). In practice, this allowed the elites to solidify their position and make social mobility even harder.

The Chief of Staff of the Bangladeshi military Waker-uz-Zaman then announced that an interim government would be formed and that any violence used against student protesters by the previous government will be investigated. President Mohammed Shahabuddin then announced a reshuffle of the country’s armed, the release the Hasina’s political arch-rival Khaleda Zia from prison, and the appointment of an interim government under Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus, who had received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the reduction of poverty through the use of microcredit and microfinance.

So far it appears that the Yunus interim government will continue implementing the regulatory changes necessary to have the Apostille Convention come into effect in Bangladesh by March 2025.