Portal:Bangladesh/Selected biography/14

Sheikh Hasina Wazed (born 28 September 1947) is a Bangladeshi politician who served as Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2009 to 2024. A daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first president of Bangladesh, she is Bangladesh's longest-serving prime minister and one of the longest-serving female heads of government globally. She has also served as president of the Awami League since 1981.

Born to the Sheikh family of Tungipara in Gopalganj, Hasina had little presence in politics prior to the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975. After years in exile, she returned to Bangladesh in 1981, leading the Awami League in opposition to military rule. Alongside Khaleda Zia, her future longtime political rival in what was termed the Battle of Begums, she played a key role in the 1990 uprising that restored parliamentary democracy. After serving as Leader of the Opposition from 1991 to 1996, she won the June 1996 general election, beginning her first term as prime minister. She served as Leader of the Opposition again from 2001 to 2006, before winning a second term at the 2008 general election.

Hasina's second premiership was marked by significant economic and infrastructural development, as well as increasing national and international concern over democratic backsliding, enforced disappearances, human rights abuses and restrictions on political opposition and press freedom. Critics accused her government of consolidating power, corruption and embezzlement of foreign reserve. Observers raised allegations of electoral irregularities in the 2014, 2018 and 2024 general elections.

In July 2024, security forces led by the Awami League repressed a students' quota reform movement, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of protesters. The movement subsequently coalesced into an uprising and non-cooperation movement, leading to her resignation and exile to India and bringing an end to her 15-year premiership. In November 2025, she was convicted in absentia by the Bangladeshi International Crimes Tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity, including ordering lethal force against protesters, and sentenced to death, which she rejected as politically motivated.

Hasina was among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2018, and was listed as being one of the 100 most powerful women in the world by Forbes in 2015, 2018 and 2022. (Full article...)