Bangladesh Water Development Board
মেনু নির্বাচন করুন
Honorable Adviser
Syeda Rizwana Hasan
Honorable Advisor
Ministry of Water Resources
Syeda Rizwana Hasan was sworn in as an advisor to the interim government on 8 August 2024 and was assigned to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on 9 August 2024 and to the Ministry of Water Resources on 16 August 2024.
Syeda Rizwana Hasan is an enrolled lawyer with the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. In professional life, she was working for the cause of environment as the Chief Executive of a reputed national Non-Governmental Organization named Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA). Her main focus is to promote the notion of environmental justice in Bangladesh.
Syeda Rizwana did her masters and graduation in law from the University of Dhaka with distinction. She started her career with BELA in 1993 and continued with the same organization till she joined the interim government as an adivisor.
BELA, the organization that Rizwana ran has received the Global 500 Roll of Honors of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the year 2003. BELA has won the Environmental Award (given for the first time that year) in 2007 given by the Department of Environment for popularizing environmental law. The organization has also been awarded with M. Saleem Ullah Memorial Gold Medal 2009 as a token of recognition of its service to the people in providing effective leadership for the preservation and sustenance of the environment. BELA has been awarded the prestigious ‘Tang Award’ from Taiwan for its contribution in the arena of Rule of Law (2020).
Rizwana Hasan has received the ‘Annanya Top Ten Award’ given by a reputed journal of Bangladesh. She is also amongst the first five South Asian women to receive the ‘Celebrating Womenhood’ award (2008) given by the Creative Statement and South Asia Partnership based in Nepal. Rizwana has received the prestigious ‘Goldman Environmental Prize’, often referred as the Nobel Prize for Environment, for the year 2009 for her outstanding contribution in protecting and conserving the environment of the country. She has also been named as one of the 40 Environmental Heroes of the World by the TIME magazine. Recognizing her impassioned leadership, hard-driving skill, and uncompromising courage in the campaign of judicial activism that has demonstrated that the right to environment is nothing less than a people’s right to dignity and life, Rizwana has been awarded with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, often regarded Asia's Nobel Prize, in 2012. Rizwana Hasan has also been awarded the 16th Annual International Women of Courage Award, 2022 given by the U.S Department of State and the Green Legal Award from the Balipara Foundation.
In her personal life Syeda Rizwana is married to business person Abu Bakar Siddique. She is a mother of three children.