Sheikh Hasina

Sheikh Hasina (Bengali: শেখ হাসিনা) (born September 28, 1947) is a Bangladeshi politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Awami League, a major political party, since 1981.

She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father (and first president) of Bangladesh and wife of an internationally reputed nuclear scientist, M. A. Wazed Miah. Sheikh Hasina's party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections, thus assuring her of the post of prime minister. Sheikh Hasina has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001.

Sheikh Hasina's political career started as a student activist in Eden College in the 1960s. While at Government Intermediate College, she was elected vice president of the College Students Union for the term 1966–67. Her opponent was the leftist student leader Motiya Chowdhury, who much later joined Awami League and became a member of Hasina's cabinet.

At the University of Dhaka Sheikh Hasina was a member of the Chhatra League (the student wing of Awami League) and secretary of the Rokeya Hall unit. During the liberation war in 1971, Hasina, then a young mother, was held under in-house arrest with her mother, brothers, sister and her son. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was imprisoned in West Pakistan during this period. After liberation, Hasina's involvement in politics was minimal as Sheikh Kamal, her brother, was touted as Mujib's successor.

Sheikh Hasina married M. A. Wazed Mia, a nuclear scientist in 1968 who has died on the 9th of May 2009. She has two children - Sajeeb Wazed Joy, and Saima Wazed Hossain Putul. Joy lives in the United States, and Putul lives in Canada.

Prime Minister Hasina is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an International network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women's development.