Oxford to honour 1971 Indo-Pak war refugee activist

Prasun Sonwalkar

London, Feb 6 (PTI) 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). PTI