Dipu Moni

Dr. Dipu Moni is the first woman Foreign Minister of Bangladesh.
Qualification: MBBS (DMC), LLB (NU), LLM (London), MPH (Johns Hopkins)

Before her induction to the cabinet Dr. Dipu Moni was Secretary for Women's Affairs and a Member of the Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Bangladesh Awami League. She is a qualified physician and draws upon advanced qualifications in Public Health and Law and is an Advocate of the Bangladesh Supreme Court. Dr. Dipu Moni represents Chandpur-3 as a Member of Parliament.

Until now the principal focus of her work has been women's rights and entitlements, health legislation, health policy and management, health financing, strategic planning, and health and human rights under the Constitution and law in Bangladesh's economic and social development programmes and foreign policy issues of the region and globally. Over the past ten years Dr. Dipu Moni has represented her leader and party's position to Cabinet Ministers and public representatives of Asia, Europe and the USA, Ambassadors and Senior Representatives of International Institutions. She writes, teaches, consults, researches, conducts advocacy programmes, organizes and leads free health service clinics with a pool of qualified physicians, and promotes legislation on key issues.

Educated at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Dhaka Medical College, the country's premier Medical School, and at the University of London, Dipu Moni has undertaken specialized courses at Johns Hopkins and a course at Harvard on Negotiations and Conflict Resolution.

Dipu Moni is an avid protagonist of representative politics and women's participation in the political decision-making process. She is one of two Master Trainers for Women political Activists of the Party in which regard she has trained women political activists under a programme of her party that she helped design and implement in a close relationship with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) of the United States.

Dr. Dipu Moni is the daughter of the late M.A. Wadud, a close associate of Bangabandhu and H.S. Suhrawardy in the struggle for democracy and the rights of Bangalees. Mr. Wadud was a founding member of the Awami League and is known especially for his role in the Language Movement and as the first Council-elected General Secretary of the East Pakistan Chhatra League. Mr. Wadud suffered imprisonment on several occasions during his political life. After the assassination of the Father of the Nation, upon his refusal to accept a Cabinet position, he was imprisoned by the military government.

Dipu Moni is married to Tawfique Nawaz, one of two Oxbridge educated Senior Advocates of the Bangladesh Supreme Court, Head of an internationally reputed law firm and a parampara (generational) exponent of at least a 2000 year old Indian Classical Musical form, namely Alaap, on the Grande Flute. They have one son, Tawquir Rashaad, 20, a law student at the University of London, a winner of the UCL Global Excellence Scholarship from the region comprising the Indian Subcontinent and the Middle East, also a parampara exponent of Alaap on the Grande Flute and one daughter, Tani Deepavali, 15, a concert Alaapiya on the Violin.