Sheikh Hasina

Biography

Sheikh Hasina was born in Tungipara in 1947, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and studied at Eden Mohila College and the University of Dhaka. She had little part in politics before her father's assassination in 1975; after years in exile she returned in 1981 to lead the Awami League, which had made her its president.

Through the 1980s she led opposition to military rule and, alongside her rival Khaleda Zia, helped bring about the 1990 uprising that restored parliamentary democracy. She was leader of the opposition from 1991 to 1996 and won the June 1996 election; her first government reached a Ganges water-sharing deal with India and concluded the 1997 Chittagong Hill Tracts peace accord. Back in opposition from 2001, she survived a grenade attack on an Awami League rally in Dhaka in 2004 that killed 24 people.

She returned to power after the 2008 election and governed until 2024, becoming Bangladesh's longest-serving prime minister. Her second premiership brought rapid economic and infrastructure growth but also democratic backsliding, enforced disappearances and curbs on the press and opposition. Student-led protests in mid-2024 forced her to resign and flee to India on 5 August, and in November 2025 the International Crimes Tribunal convicted her in absentia of crimes against humanity over the crackdown and sentenced her to death.