15,000 to 20,000 people sleep and spend the day on the pavements of Dhaka city. These are some of the most vulnerable people in the country, with few assets enabling them to cope with life and a political, social and economic context that virtually ignores them.

Pavement dwellers are engaged in a variety of activities, including being porters, labourers unloading trucks in markets, rickshaw-pullers, maidservants, sex traders and waste recyclers. These people are deprived of the basic necessities like food, shelter, health, and security. They are conscious about their identities as human beings, although they are living an inhumane life. ‘Amrao manush’ is a Bangla phrase that means "We are humans too".

The number of pavement dwellers increased at about the same rate with the increasing population of Dhaka. A significant cause of the city’s rapid population growth is urban migration, including both people being pushed out of rural areas because they have lost resources to floods, debt or other disasters and people being pulled to Dhaka by the promise of better opportunities.

Now is the right time to think about this community of victims swept behind by the seemingly unstoppable tide of urban migration.