Sheikh Hasina ousted in Bangladesh

On August 5, 2024 Sheikh Hasina resigned as prime minister of Bangladesh and flew by military helicopter to India, as protesters stormed her residence, Ganabhaban, in Dhaka. The army chief announced an interim government, and Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning banker, was sworn in on August 8 as Chief Adviser. She had led the country since 2009, after an earlier term from 1996 to 2001.¹

The protests began in July over a quota that reserved 30 percent of government jobs for descendants of veterans of the 1971 war of independence, which students said favoured supporters of her Awami League. The High Court restored the quota in June, and the Supreme Court cut it to 5 percent in July, but by then police and party activists had killed many protesters. Abu Sayed, a student shot in Rangpur on July 16, became a symbol. The government imposed curfews and an internet shutdown, and the demand turned into a call for her to resign.¹³

In February 2025 the UN human rights office reported that as many as about 1,400 people had been killed between mid-July and mid-August, most by security forces. Hasina was later sentenced to death in absentia, in November 2025, by a tribunal in Dhaka for crimes against humanity, which she rejected as politically motivated. Elections held on February 12, 2026, with the Awami League barred, were won by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose alliance took about two thirds of the seats, and a referendum on reforms known as the July Charter was approved.²³