The founder and chairperson of Brae Fazle Hasan Abed is to be knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for his services to alleviating poverty in Bangladesh and abroad.

Abed is the first Bangladeshi to receive the honour since 1947, though he is the second person in his familyto be knighted.

In 1913 his great uncle, Justice Nawab Sir Syed Shamsul Huda also received a knighthood.

When the Queen's New Year's Honours List was announced yesterday. Abed said, “I am humbled by the honour conferred on me.

“I thank my colleagues in Brae, who are at the forefront of the struggle to eradicate poverty in Bangladesh and abroad.”

Prof Yunus, the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, congratulated Abed saying, “This is a matter of tremendous honour for Bangladeshis here and around the world."

“It is testament to your untiring efforts to fight poverty and injustice through the work ofBRAC.”

Abed was born in 1936 in Baniachong of Habiganj district and he attended Pabna Zilla School and Dhaka College before studying Naval Architecture at Glasgow University.

When he returned to Bangladesh he joined the Shell Oil Company, but when the cyclone of 1970 killed 300,000 people, the course of his life changed.

He established the relief and rehabilitation organisation HELP but was forced to flee Bangladesh when the Liberation War broke out in 1971.

Whilst in England he set up Action Bangladesh to lobby for independence and when he returned home after the war, he used the funds he had generated from selling his flat in London to set up Brae.

Within 30 years Brae has

become the largest development organisation in the world.

It currently operates in more than 69,000 villages and provides assistance to around 110 million people.

Brae provides free primary education, essential healthcare, agricultural support, legal services to promote human rights, as well as microfinance and enterprise development

In 2002 Brae extended its projects to an international scale by initiating development projects in Afghanistan, and it currently operates in eight countries across Asia and Africa.

Brae received international recognition when it was awarded the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize in 2008 as well as the Swadhinata Puroshkar in 2007.

Abed's contributions to social welfare have been recognised on several other occasions.

He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1980, the Unicef Maurice Pate Award in 1992, the Olof Palme Prize in 2001, the UNDP Mahbub ul Haq Award for Outstanding Contribution in Human Development in 2004 and the Inaugural Clinton Global Citizen Award in2007.

Abed has also received several honorary degrees from Yale, Columbia University and Oxford University.

He is also a founding member of Ashoka's prestigious Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship.