Abed, Sir Fazle Hasan, 1936–2019, Bangladeshi humanitarian. After studying accounting in Britain, he returned (1968) to what was then East Pakistan and began working for Shell Pakistan. In 1970, during Bangladesh's war for independence, he returned to Britain and founded a group advocating for Bangladesh, and after independence he founded a relief effort, the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee, now simply BRAC. BRAC subsequently became one of the world's largest nongovernmental organizations, with operations in a number of Asian and African countries; it primarily assists the landless poor with education, microfinance, and health care. Abed was knighted in 2010.
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