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Oxford to honour 1971 Indo-Pak war refugee activist
A poverty campaigner, Fazle Hasan Abed, who founded the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in 1972, will be given an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Oxford.
A poverty campaigner, Fazle Hasan Abed, who founded the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in 1972, will be given an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Oxford.
Abed founded the BRAC after the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan to provide relief and rehabilitation to war refugees in a remote area of Bangladesh before turning to long-term poverty alleviation.
The organisation now works in health, education and microfinance and is the world's largest NGO.
Abed is among seven leading figures from various fields to receive honourary degrees from the university on June 24.
The degree of Doctor of Letters will also be conferred on Philip Pullman, a novelist of international distinction. He is best known for the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, which is being made into a series of films.
Pullman's novels, many of them aimed at children and young teenagers, have won a large number of literary prizes. These include two awards as Author of the Year, the Carnegie Medal, the Children's Book of the Year Award and the Whitbread Book of the Year.
Others to get the honour are: Dr Santiago Calatrava-Valls (architect), Professor Natalie Zemon Davis (historian), Prof Erwin L Hahn (physics), Professor Barry Marshall(microbiology) and Mitsuko Uchida (pianist).
