After weeks of civil unrest in Bangladesh — which resulted in the deaths of over 300 civilians and the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina — microfinance pioneer and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was last week sworn in as interim leader.
It marks a dramatic turn of events for Bangladesh’s beleaguered development sector, which witnessed violent crackdowns against human rights activists and civil society leaders during Hasina’s 15-year rule. Yunus himself, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for helping to lift thousands in Bangladesh out of poverty, had up until last week been facing a string of criminal charges, which supporters say were politically motivated.
Other members of the newly appointed administration include the previously imprisoned leader of a human rights organization, and an environmental campaigner whose husband was forcibly disappeared — one of an estimated 600 enforced disappearances, meaning abductions and detentions that are never accounted for, committed by the state since 2009.