Jenneke Arens

Jenneke Arens (MA, MSc, PhD - The Netherlands) lived in Bangladesh from 1973 to 1975 where she did a village study on power relations between poor and rich peasants and the position of women. She co-authored the book Jhagrapur: Poor Peasants and Women in a Village in Bangladesh (1977). In 2011 she completed a re-study of the same village. Her experience in Bangladesh in the 1970s has had a great influence on her life. She has been involved in solidarity work as a member of the Bangladesh Group Netherlands since its establishment in 1979 and became its coordinator in 1990. She is also one of the initiators of the Organising Committee Chittagong Hill Tracts Campaign (OCCHTC), which organised the first international conference on the CHT in Amsterdam in 1986. She was coordinator and resource person of the International Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, which was established in 1990 to investigate the human rights situation in the CHT and is at present advisor of the Commission re-established in 2008. She is and has been a board member of various national and international organisations and most of her life she has been actively involved in the women’s movement, peace movement, and other social movements in the Netherlands.