ABSTRACT
The Constitution of Bangladesh was adopted in 1972 when the concept of human rights had already been established in international law, and many formal conventions and declarations had come into force. Following the general trend of modern constitutions and the line of politics of classifying human rights reflected in the International Bill of Rights, the Constitution recognised a set of civil and political rights as judicially enforceable fundamental rights and another set of economic, social, and cultural rights as non-justiciable constitutional principles. It was debated in the Constituent Assembly whether the ‘principles’ were to be turned into enforceable rights. Although such a proposal was denied by the majority in the Assembly, the constitution-makers expressed their opinion that those state principles could be made enforceable in the future. However, due to the insertion of article 7B in the Constitution in 2011, any reformative move to make the unenforceable principles enforceable does not seem to be a possibility anymore. The chapter will examine different apparatus of constitutional protection vis-à-vis the social and economic human rights embedded in the Constitution as principles. It will also critically analyse judicial interpretations of constitutional principles to locate their current constitutional positioning and work out the possibility of their further enforcement.
