Bangladesh’s parliament has cancelled or rolled back at least 23 reform ordinances introduced after the 2024 student-led uprising, cutting back measures on human rights, judicial oversight, anticorruption and policing. The votes came as lawmakers reviewed a package of 133 ordinances in recent days, with the majority still approved.
The ordinances were issued by the interim government of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus after Sheikh Hasina fled for India, and they were meant to lock in accountability after months of upheaval. Instead, several of the most sensitive changes failed to clear the constitutional deadline and either were repealed or were allowed to lapse after parliament did not approve them within 30 days of its first sitting.
The rollback lands in a country still shaped by the revolt that brought down Hasina in July 2024 after years of criticism over high-handed governance, suppression of dissent, systemic enforced disappearances and human rights abuses. That uprising pushed a sweeping political reset, and the July National Charter — signed by more than two dozen parties and later endorsed in a nationwide referendum alongside the February 2026 election with about 70 percent support — was described as a blueprint for structural change across judicial independence, human rights, elections and decentralisation.
Opposition parties, civil society groups and several analysts have described the latest move as a retreat from the core safeguards agreed after the uprising. The government says the review is necessary to correct flaws and reintroduce stronger laws after consultation, but the timing has sharpened fears that the new parliament is undoing the very reforms that were supposed to outlast the interim period.
Under Bangladesh’s constitution, ordinances must be placed before parliament within 30 days of its first sitting and then approved, amended or allowed to lapse, which put the newly elected chamber that convened in March 2026 at the center of the fight over how far the post-uprising settlement should go. The question now is not whether the country will keep revisiting those reforms, but how much of the promise attached to them survives the parliamentary process.