Dipu Moni

Dipu Moni (দীপু মনি; born 8 December 1965) is a Bangladeshi politician and Minister of Social Welfare of Bangladesh. She is a Member of Parliament for Chandpur-3 constituency. She was Minister of Education in Fourth Hasina Cabinet and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Second Hasina Cabinet. She was appointed the first female Foreign Minister on 6 January 2009 after victory for the Awami League-led Grand Alliance on 29 December 2008. Currently she is Joint secretary of Bangladesh Awami League

Early life
Dipu Moni was born on 8 December 1965 in the village of Kamranga in Chandpur, Comilla district, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Her father, Mohammad Abdul Wadud, was a founding member of the Awami League and known especially for his role in the Language Movement and as the first Council-elected General Secretary of the East Pakistan Chhatra League. Moni passed HSC from Holy Cross College, Dhaka. Her mother, Begum Rahima, was a teacher. Her brother, Jawadur Rahim Wadud Tipu, is a diabetic foot surgeon.

Moni studied MBBS at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital and LLB at Bangladesh National University. She later earned Masters in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and Master of Laws at the University of London as an external student. She completed a course on Negotiations and Conflict Resolutions from Harvard University. She is a lawyer of Bangladesh Supreme Court.

Political career
Moni was the Secretary for Women's Affairs and a Member of the Sub‐Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Bangladesh Awami League before her induction to the cabinet. She represented Chandpur‐3 as a Member of Bangladesh Parliament. She worked for women's rights and entitlements, health legislation, health policy and management, health financing, strategic planning, and health and human rights under the Constitution and law in Bangladesh's economic and social development programmes and foreign policy issues of the region and globally. As a Minister of Foreign Affairs she has represented her government's position to the Cabinet Ministers and public representatives of Asia, Europe and the US, Ambassadors and Senior Representatives of International Institutions. As the foreign minister she sought an apology for the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide from Pakistan. She also tried to bring the absconding killers of president Sheikh Mujib. Moni is the Awami League Joint General Secretary. She was elected chairman of Asian University for Women in 2016. She is the chairperson of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs.

Criticisms
As the minister of foreign affairs, Moni was widely criticized by different news media because of her frequent overseas visits. According to some news reports, she made 187 foreign trips and 600 days of overseas stay in four and a half years. Moni responded that she went abroad every time with the approval of the prime minister. She said that she made 114 foreign tours, including 36 with the president and the prime minister and claimed that the number of her bilateral visits was 62, not 17 as reported.

Personal life
Moni is married to Tawfique Nawaz, a senior advocate of the Bangladesh Supreme court.