1. Kamal Hossain is known as the "Father of the Bangladeshi Constitution" and regarded as an icon of secular democracy in the Indian subcontinent.
110 Facts About Kamal Hossain
1. 2.
Kamal Hossain retired from political activities and from the post of president of Gano Forum in October 2023.
3.
Kamal Hossain was called to the bar of England and Wales in Lincoln's Inn in 1959.
4.
Kamal Hossain enrolled as an advocate in the High Court of East Pakistan.
5.
Kamal Hossain worked on cases with prominent Pakistani lawyers early in his legal career, including with former Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy.
6.
Kamal Hossain often worked on missing persons cases during the regime of military ruler Ayub Khan.
7.
Kamal Hossain was the lawyer for the Awami League and its leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman during the Agartala Conspiracy Case.
8.
Kamal Hossain was elected as vice-chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council in 1970 before the breakup of Pakistan.
9.
Kamal Hossain was imprisoned in West Pakistan with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman during the war of independence that transformed East Pakistan into Bangladesh.
10.
Kamal Hossain 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.
11.
Kamal Hossain led the process which produced the 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh.
12.
Kamal Hossain then served as Foreign Minister, and led Bangladesh to join the United Nations in 1974.
13.
Kamal Hossain survived the 1975 Bangladesh coup while on a tour of Yugoslavia.
14.
Kamal Hossain became based in Oxford University during the late 1970s as a visiting research fellow.
15.
Kamal Hossain fell out with Awami League president Sheikh Hasina during the 1990s, and formed the Gono Forum party.
16.
Kamal Hossain has often worked with the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Nations.
17.
Kamal Hossain was considered as a candidate for the post of UN Secretary General.
18.
Kamal Hossain has been a leading lawyer in the field of human rights, energy law, corporate law and international arbitration.
19.
Kamal Hossain served on the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and as UN Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan.
20.
Kamal Hossain has been a member of tribunals dealing with maritime disputes between Malaysia and Singapore and Guyana and Suriname.
21.
Kamal Hossain was a two-term member of the UN Compensation Commission.
22.
Kamal Hossain 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.
23.
Kamal Hossain's family belongs to one of the zamindar families of Shayestabad in Barisal.
24.
Kamal Hossain's father, Ahmed Kamal Hossain, was an early Bengali Muslim physician and MBBS holder in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India.
25.
The elder Kamal Hossain was a relative of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the third Prime Minister of Bengal and fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan.
26.
Kamal Hossain was born on 20 April 1937 in Calcutta.
27.
Kamal Hossain's family moved to Dhaka, East Bengal in 1949 after the partition of British India.
28.
Kamal Hossain attended St Gregory's High School, where his classmates included the future academic Anisuzzaman.
29.
Kamal Hossain received a two-year scholarship at the University of Notre Dame when he was aged 16, obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from Notre Dame, and later pursued a master's degree from the University of Michigan.
30.
Kamal Hossain was a member of the association's leadership committee, which was led by Munir Ahmed Khan.
31.
Kamal Hossain has cited Justice Fazal Akbar as an inspiration to study law.
32.
Kamal Hossain moved to England from the US in 1958, traveling to London by ship.
33.
In 1959, Kamal Hossain received a Bachelor of Civil Law degree from the University of Oxford and enrolled as a barrister in Lincoln's Inn.
34.
Kamal Hossain enrolled as an advocate in the High Court of East Pakistan.
35.
Kamal Hossain received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in international law from Oxford in 1964, with his dissertation "State Sovereignty and the United Nations Charter".
36.
Kamal Hossain was interviewed in Athens and offered a job at the company's Dhaka office; the firm had offices in Dhaka and Chittagong with an Irish solicitor and British barristers.
37.
Kamal Hossain invited to join the firm by lawyer Abul Ahmad.
38.
At Original, Kamal Hossain worked with two Englishmen and Justice Mohammad Kamal Hossain.
39.
Kamal Hossain was at Original from 1959 to 1962, when he came into frequent contact with barrister and former prime minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy.
40.
Pakistan had come under military rule after a 1958 coup, and Kamal Hossain has recounted that he and Suhrawardy often zigzagged their car through Dhaka's streets to confuse Pakistani-intelligence vehicles.
41.
Kamal Hossain has said that Rahman predicted the collapse of Ayub Khan's regime in 10 years.
42.
Kamal Hossain was a lawyer for the English Rally brothers, who owned businesses in the Port of Narayanganj, and worked on a case for Chandranath Films.
43.
Kamal Hossain represented The Daily Ittefaq, one of East Pakistan's largest Bengali-language newspapers, when it was banned by the Pakistani government.
44.
Kamal Hossain joined Dhaka University's Department of International Relations as a part-time lecturer in 1961, and later taught international law.
45.
Kamal Hossain's academic work at the university continued until 1969, and he was a staunch supporter of the six point movement.
46.
Kamal Hossain was elected the last vice-chairman of the All-Pakistan Bar Council in 1969.
47.
Kamal Hossain was considered one of Mujib's closest confidantes, along with Tajuddin Ahmad.
48.
Between January and March 1971, Kamal Hossain negotiated with Pakistan's Law Minister Alvin Robert Cornelius and the Pakistan Peoples Party's lawyer Abdul Hafeez Pirzada over the transfer of power.
49.
Kamal Hossain was imprisoned in West Pakistan's Central Prison Haripur during the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence.
50.
Kamal Hossain was appointed as the first law minister of the newly formed country.
51.
Kamal Hossain was chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee in the Constituent Assembly of Bangladesh.
52.
Kamal Hossain was 35 years of age at the time, making him one of the youngest constitution drafters in the world.
53.
Kamal Hossain was credited for leading the successful completion of the constitution's drafting process.
54.
Kamal Hossain recounted that socialism was an important political current in South Asia, especially during the 1960s and 1970s.
55.
Kamal Hossain served as a Member of Parliament from Dhaka in the Jatiyo Sangshad.
56.
Kamal Hossain became the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh in 1973.
57.
Kamal Hossain secured Bangladesh's admission to the United Nations in 1974.
58.
Kamal Hossain was a signatory to the Delhi Agreement between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
59.
Kamal Hossain began to study the legal reforms needed for Bangladesh to launch a hydrocarbon industry.
60.
Kamal Hossain drafted the Bangladesh Petroleum Act after studying the laws of Malaysia and Indonesia.
61.
Kamal Hossain offered to resign on several occasions because of pressure due to the Awami League's lobbying activities.
62.
At the time of the Mujib's killing, Kamal Hossain was visiting Yugoslavia on a bilateral visit.
63.
Kamal Hossain refused invitations to join the martial law government.
64.
Kamal Hossain returned to Bangladesh in the late 1970s during this period of political liberalization.
65.
In 1981, Kamal Hossain was instrumental in orchestrating Sheikh Hasina's return to Bangladesh from her exile in India.
66.
Kamal Hossain contested the 1981 Bangladeshi presidential election as the Awami League's candidate.
67.
Kamal Hossain lost to then incumbent Justice Abdus Sattar, who had been acting president after the assassination of Ziaur Rahman.
68.
At the time of President Hussain Muhammad Ershad's downfall in 1990, Kamal Hossain played a leading role in drawing up the Three-Alliance Roadmap for the restoration of parliamentary democracy after 15 years of presidential government.
69.
Kamal Hossain was involved in making the then chief justice Shahabuddin Ahmed the head of the transitional government.
70.
Kamal Hossain set up a small political party called Gano Forum.
71.
In 1996, when the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party were at loggerheads, Kamal Hossain and Syed Ishtiaq Ahmed devised a formula that culminated in the introduction of the system of caretaker governance for holding general elections.
72.
In 2003, Kamal Hossain was the counsel for The Daily Star editor Mahfuz Anam and Prothom Alo editor Matiur Rahman in a defamation case filed by Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury.
73.
In 2006, when the caretaker system was threatened by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's efforts to influence the election process, Kamal Hossain led the legal battle against the fraudulent voter list drawn up by the Zia government.
74.
Kamal Hossain criticized extrajudicial killings by the Rapid Action Battalion under the Zia administration.
75.
Kamal Hossain has criticized human rights abuses under the second and third Hasina administrations.
76.
In 2018, Kamal Hossain defended the photographer Shahidul Alam in court after Alam was detained on charges of criticizing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
77.
In October 2018, Kamal Hossain announced a new alliance called Jatiya Oikya Front, which received backing from the BNP.
78.
Kamal Hossain addressed political rallies in different Bangladeshi cities during October and November 2018.
79.
Kamal Hossain secured a major breakthrough in Bangladeshi politics by requesting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to have a dialogue with the BNP.
80.
Kamal Hossain met with the Chief Election Commissioner, attended the Mawlid prayer in Bangabhaban and the military reception on Armed Forces Day.
81.
Between 1977 and 2001, Kamal Hossain served as an international consultant for the multinational law firm Clifford Chance.
82.
Kamal Hossain was President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, the professional association of law practitioners in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.
83.
Kamal Hossain represented Petrobangla in a lawsuit filed by Chevron at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.
84.
Kamal Hossain is renowned worldwide as a jurist and enjoys a long-standing association with the United Nations.
85.
Kamal Hossain served two terms on the UN Compensation Commission in Geneva.
86.
Kamal Hossain was a member of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.
87.
Kamal Hossain was Co-Chair of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Territories in 2001.
88.
Kamal Hossain was Chairman of the Advisory Commission on Human Rights for the Commonwealth Secretariat.
89.
Kamal Hossain was a member of a human rights mission to Indonesia concerning the status of East Timor.
90.
At the urging of the UN, Kamal Hossain advised China on energy-related legal reforms after the Asian giant began to liberalize its economy.
91.
Kamal Hossain is a member of the Panel of Arbitrators at ICSID and served as chair and member of a number of international arbitral tribunals.
92.
Kamal Hossain was appointed as a judge ad hoc by Malaysia for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the case Malaysia v Singapore ; he was a member of the International Law of the Sea Annex VII Tribunal in the same case, as well as in Guyana v Suriname.
93.
Kamal Hossain has been vice chairman of the International Law Association in London, chairman of the South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies, and advisory council member for Transparency International.
94.
At the request of Commonwealth Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku, Kamal Hossain visited Cameroon and The Gambia to assess the conditions of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
95.
The Secretary-General entrusted a team including Kamal Hossain with assessing Cameroon's eligibility for Commonwealth membership.
96.
Kamal Hossain was part of the Commonwealth observer team during the 1994 South African general election.
97.
Kamal Hossain was a counsel to the governments of Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, the Cayman Islands, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.
98.
Kamal Hossain is the vanguard of liberal, secular politics in modern Bangladesh.
99.
In regional neighbors India and Pakistan, Kamal Hossain is celebrated as a secular icon with impeccable credentials.
100.
Kamal Hossain delivered a speech at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs in 2012, which was titled "Building a peaceful South Asia in response to the aspirations of all our peoples".
101.
Kamal Hossain criticized Hossain for holding the presidency of Gono Forum since its founding, arguing that the party had "no prospects of a new leadership in sight".
102.
Kamal Hossain told the reporter to "keep quiet" but later regretted his reaction after protests from two journalist trade unions.
103.
In 2013, Oxford University Press published Kamal Hossain's memoir, titled Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice.
104.
Kamal Hossain authored a book in Bengali in 1994, titled Svayattasasana theke svadhinata.
105.
Kamal Hossain taught constitutional law and international law at Queen's College, Oxford.
106.
Kamal Hossain was a research student and research fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a visiting fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
107.
Kamal Hossain taught international law and constitutional law in the University of Dhaka.
108.
Kamal Hossain was a visiting professor at the Free University of Amsterdam.
109.
Kamal Hossain has two daughters, including the leading Bangladeshi civil rights lawyer Sara Hossain and the film maker Dina Hossain.
110.
Kamal Hossain's son-in-law is British journalist David Bergman.