German development cooperation is supporting important initiatives by the Government of Bangladesh to promote governance, decentralisation and the rule of law. In February 2007, for example, Bangladesh acceded to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and then began to work towards compliance with the convention's provisions. GIZ (formerly GTZ) provided support for the Compliance and Gap Analysis and now continues to support implementation of the National Integrity Strategy and the UNCAC Implementation Plan.

The project to promote the legal and social empowerment of women, which involves cooperation with the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the Spanish Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo, addresses the legal obstacles that women face in asserting their rights, and supports gender-responsive community-based policing, to encourage women to approach the police for assistance when their rights have been violated and help prevent crimes against women.

The project to improve the situation of overcrowding in prisons in Bangladesh brings together the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Prison Directorate, the police, the courts, social services and lawyers. Its aim is to reduce the severe overcrowding in Bangladesh's prisons quickly and permanently through practical low-cost interventions such as training for paralegals.

The project to promote social and environmental standards in industry is working with a range of Bangladeshi partner organisations, including government institutions, trade associations, private service providers and NGOs, to assist Bangladesh's readymade garment sector in its efforts to comply with international social standards, increase productivity and operate in an environmentally sustainable manner.

The second urban governance and infrastructure improvement project is helping Bangladesh's municipalities (the pourashavas) to meet improved governance criteria, such as participation of women and the poor, financial accountability and participatory planning, so that they can access funds for infrastructure development. The project to enhance municipal governance for poverty reduction cooperated with the pourashava of Narayanganj to create a database that will enable all the pourashavas to effectively identify the poorest and most vulnerable families who need assistance.

Finally, two rural infrastructure improvement projects have gone beyond simply constructing roads and market buildings, and have improved local governance through capacity development activities for the officials and market management committees in the unions parishad (rural local authorities).