Kamal Hossain

Information about the license status of integrated media files (e.g. pictures or videos) can usually be called up by clicking on the Wikimedia Commons URL above.

Profession

Affiliations

External links

Kamal Hossain (born 20 April 1937) is a founding leader, lawyer and politician of Bangladesh. He is known as the "father of the Bangladeshi constitution" and regarded as an icon of secular democracy in the Indian subcontinent. Hossain currently heads his own law firm in Dhaka, serves as president of the Gano Forum political party, and advocates for democratic reform. His autobiography Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice is an important book on Bangladeshi history, particularly regarding the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Hossain studied in the United States at the University of Notre Dame and in the United Kingdom at the University of Oxford. He was called to the bar of England and Wales in Lincoln's Inn in 1959. Hossain enrolled as an advocate in the High Court of East Pakistan. He worked as a junior lawyer with the famous lawyer and statesman Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who was the last Prime Minister of Bengal and fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan. His early commercial law clients included Rally Brothers, an English-run business in the Port of Narayanganj. Between 1961 and 1968, he taught law at Dhaka University. Hossain was the lawyer for the Awami League and its leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman during the Agartala Conspiracy Case. Hossain often worked on missing persons cases during the regime of Ayub Khan. He was elected as the last vice-chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council in 1970 prior to the breakup of the country and the emergence of Bangladesh. In 1971, he was part of the Awami League's negotiation team for the transfer of power after the 1970 general election. Hossain was imprisoned in West Pakistan with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman during the war of independence that transformed East Pakistan into Bangladesh. He served in Bangladesh's first post-independence government from 1972 to 1975 as Law Minister and chairman of the drafting committee in the Constituent Assembly. Hossain led the process which produced the 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh. Under Hossain's leadership of the drafting committee, Bangladesh became the first constitutionally secular state in South Asia. He then served as Foreign Minister, and led Bangladesh to join the United Nations in 1974. As Energy Minister, Hossain later enacted the Bangladesh Petroleum Act. Hossain's legal reforms were emulated in India and China, including in India's 42nd constitutional amendment and during Chinese economic reform in energy law. Some of his reforms in Bangladesh were repealed by the military dictatorship of Ziaur Rahman in 1977. Secularism was reinstated in Bangladesh's constitution by the Supreme Court in 2010. Hossain survived the 1975 Bangladesh coup while on a tour of Yugoslavia. He became based in Oxford University during the late 1970s as a visiting research fellow. In 1981, he ran as an opposition candidate for president against Abdus Sattar. Hossain fell out with Awami League president Sheikh Hasina during the 1990s, and formed the Gono Forum (People's Forum) party. Hossain has often worked with the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Nations. He was also considered as a candidate for the post of UN Secretary General. Described by journalist Mizanur Rahman Khan as the "conscience of the nation", Hossain was compared to Adlai Stevenson by The New York Times in 1981. Hossain has been a leading lawyer in the field of human rights, energy law, corporate law and international arbitration. He served on the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and as UN Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan. Hossain has been a member of tribunals dealing with maritime disputes between Malaysia and Singapore and Guyana and Suriname. He was a two-term member of the UN Compensation Commission. He is a former vice-president of the International Law Association, former president of the Bangladesh Supreme Court Bar Association; and chairman of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust and the South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS). (Source: DBPedia)